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

---

[49] But, fearing to discourage them by a new retrograde movement, he subsequently countermanded this order, and each division remained stationary, strengthening the ground it occupied by means of abatis. He definitely gave up the offensive, thus abandoning all the great advantages he had obtained by the successful manoeuvres of the preceding days. The positions of the Federal army were indeed very bad: they had been selected in haste and in the dark; they had neither perspective nor eminence; some of them were commanded by neighboring heights; they were all surrounded by thickets which did not allow the soldiers either to move back of their lines or to perceive the approach of an enemy; in short, there was no advantageous connection between them. It would have been better for Hooker, since he insisted upon fighting in the forest, not to have come out of it, and to have employed the 1st of May, which he had wasted in fruitless manoeuvring, in rectifying his positions. Howard, at Dowdall's Tavern, which he had not left, formed the extreme right; Slocum was in the centre at Fairview and Chancellorsville; Sickles came to place himself between them in order to reinforce them, Birney's division occupying the front line, the two others being kept in reserve; Hancock took position on the left of Slocum on the turnpike, in advance of the other division of the Second corps, that of French, which remained massed near Chancellorsville, as well as that of Sykes; Meade formed the left, along the River Road, with Humphreys' and Griffin's divisions.

In thus persisting in defending the approaches to Chancellorsville, Hooker might still have preserved the advantage of the offensive by resuming that attitude at some other point, and by shifting the place of attack from his right to his left wing. It would have been sufficient for him to have sent one of the army corps which was blocked up in the forest to Sedgwick, with such a reinforcement that the latter could have swept Early before him and fallen upon Lee's rear.

But such was not the plan of the Union general, who desired to fight a decisive battle with the greatest possible number of troops in the positions occupied by the bulk of his army on the evening of the 1st of May. At two o'clock in the morning, therefore, he sent an order to Reynolds directing him to bring up