Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 9.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[469] the afternoon. These troops had aided in defeating Hooker in the morning, and now put a stop to all further progress on Sedgwick's part, repulsing him with severe loss. Hooker complains bitterly of Sedgwick's slowness, and certainly his whole movement showed, at the least, want of boldness and enterprise. But it is absurd for a commander who was keeping forty thousand men unemployed under his eye, in the crisis of a great battle, to complain of a subordinate who had ten or twelve miles to march, in the face of a determined and skilful, if inferior, foe.

Skill and courage had given the Confederates great advantages on Sunday, but at nightfall Gen. Lee's position was still one of great difficulty. Ten thousand cavalry were making havoc in his rear, to oppose which he could only spare a small brigade of less than one thousand men. A handful of guards was the only protection he could afford to the large mass of transportation he had left at Guinea's Depot, eighteen miles in his rear. His communications and supplies were necessarily exposed to the greatest danger. In his front was an army seriously crippled by his blows, but twice as numerous as his own, the half of which had not been really engaged, while his right was threatened, in addition, by a splendid corps of over twenty thousand men, which had broken through his lines at Fredericksburg, and advanced within a few miles of Hooker. Audacity had so far been successful. Sedgwick's position invited another bold attack. Lee decided to leave Stuart with Jackson's corps, now reduced to twenty thousand men, to watch and hold in check Hooker's seventy-five or eighty thousand, while he concentrated the divisions of Anderson, McLaws and Early, of twenty-two or twenty-three thousand, against Sedgwick. This plan was carried out on Monday. Early came up behind Sedgwick; Anderson and McLaws pressed him from the Chancellorsville side. Much time was occupied in getting the troops into position. McLaws's movements were very slow. But at 6 P. M. Monday Early and Anderson attacked Sedgwick, and by nightfall the Sixth Federal corps had been forced back, with heavy loss, to Bank's Ford, under cover of the batteries on the north side of the Rappahannock. McLaws from his side followed up the retreating enemy, who was glad to escape over the river before morning. Hooker remained in his trenches at Chancellorsville all day, held inactive by Stuart's twenty thousand men, while Lee with half his army was overwhelming Sedgwick but five or six miles off.

This great stroke rendered Lee's further success reasonably certain. Now that Sedgwick was disposed of, he again ordered a concentration