Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 3.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[48] with Banks' Ford through the right bank of the river, and to watch their movements if they attempted to emerge from the forest at that point. This, however, was unnecessary trouble, for on that side also the Fifth corps, by Hooker's orders, was only thinking of strengthening itself. At this juncture night supervened, and the soldiers of both armies remained in the positions in which it had found them.

Hooker assembled his generals around him in the Chancellor house. He had not a moment to lose in order to decide what he should do on the following day. The 1st of May, which might have produced decisive results in his favor, was lost through the order to retreat which he had so unfortunately issued. His most tried friends, those who had always found him so earnest in battle —and the author thinks he may count himself among the number—have never been able to understand the motives which prompted that fatal order. He has since alleged that, finding his troops attacked before they had entirely emerged from the forest, he had feared that they would not have time to get through the defiles in which they were entangled, and that they might be beaten in detail before they had been able to deploy themselves. This reasoning is not sustained by subsequent investigation, for the positions which the troops occupied when he called them back were infinitely stronger and more easily defended than those which he assigned to them in the evening. It is to be supposed that, surprised at meeting the enemy sooner than he had anticipated, he fancied that the latter was trying to conceal the abandonment of Fredericksburg and his retreat upon Gordonsville, and that, suddenly changing all his plans, he determined to remain in the forest in order to compel him to come to meet him, or to be on his flank if his line of retreat should become defined. Since his arrival at Chancellorsville he appeared to be impressed with the idea that Lee had no other alternative but to retreat. We shall see the fatal results of this blunder. He rejected the proposition of General Warren of the Engineer corps, who urged him to take again, with all his forces, the route followed by Meade, in order to reach the Banks' Ford pass, by menacing the right flank of the enemy, and he even gave orders to close up the front lines formed by his troops in order to render its defence more easy.