Chapter 13: Chancellorsville
- On the march -- the light division passes our guns -- Marse Robert passes the light division -- the two little dogs of the battalion -- two of our guns take Chancellorsville in reverse -- interview with General McLaws -- entire regiment from New Haven, Conn., captured -- brother William and Marse Robert -- Sedgwick -- Hooker -- his battle orders -- his compliment to Lee's Army -- Lee's order announcing Jackson's death.
I recall but one or two features of the march to Chancellorsville. We were with McLaws' division, and of the 14,000 (Anderson's and McLaws' commands) with which General Lee undertook to hold, and did hold, the front of Hooker's 92,000, while Jackson, with the balance of our forces, swung around his right flank and rear. Two of our batteries, the Howitzers and Manly's, left Fredericksburg at midnight, April 30th, 1863, and early on the morning of May 1st were drawn up in column on the side of the Old Turnpike, head toward Chancellorsville, to allow the “Light division,” as Gen. A. P. Hill's command was called, to pass. Jackson, as we understood, was somewhere ahead, and Hill's superb troops seemed to be resolved that he should not be compelled to wait even a moment for them. They were in light marching order, and I thought I had never seen anything equal to the swinging, silent stride with which they fairly devoured the ground. The men were magnified in the morning mist which overhung the low flat-lands they were traversing, and at the same time imparted a ghostly indistinctness of outline, which added to the impressiveness of the scene. All was silent as the grave, save the muffled and almost synchronous tread of the thousands of feet in the soft road, and the low clatter or jingle of accoutrements.
