THE SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF CHANCELLORSVILLE.
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Captured the position at Hazel Grove, these two divisions would have beencut off from the army. He would have seen G-eneral Hooker and his staffSetting what troops he could to prevent the routed Eleventh Corps fromdemoralizing the rest of the army, and the fatal position which that portionthe army occupied rendered it an easy task to have crushed it. Neitherd^e Second Corps nor the Twelfth Corps was in position to have defendedffself against an attack by Jackson from Hazel Grove.
F'or half an hour General Jackson had the Army of the Potomac at hisUaercy. That he halted to re-form his troops in the woods, instead of forginga hcad into the clearing, where he could re-^° r m his troops more rapidly, and where hecould have seen that he was master of themtuation, turned out to be one of thosefatalities by which the most brilliant pros-hects are sacrificed. When he advanceddpon the artillery at Hazel Grove Jacksonuad another opportunity to win, if his in-antry had been properly handled. The fire°f his infantry was so high it did no harm;tlle y should have been ordered to fire so lowm to disable the cannoneers at the guns.
Had his infantry fire been as effective asUat of our artillery, Jackson would havecarried the position. The artillery fire waseffective because I applied to it that prin-ciple of dynamics in which the angle of incidence is equal to the angle ofReflection,—that is to say, if the muzzle of a gun is three feet from the grounda Ud it ig discharged so that the shot will strike the ground at a distance ofcue hundred yards, it will glance from the earth at the same angle at whichstruck it, and in another one hundred yards will be three feet from the§i°Und. I knew my first volley must be a crushing one, or Jackson, with hiss Uperior numbers, would charge across the short distance which separated118 and capture the artillery before the guns could be reloaded.
^fter the fight at Hazel Grove I sent into the woods and captured a numberJackson’s men. I asked them to what command they belonged. One ofiicua said to General A. P. Hill ’s corps, and added, “ That was a pretty tricky °U played us this evening.” I asked to what he referred. He replied, “By^itlidrawing your infantry, and catching us on your guns,”—thus showingm the flight of the Eleventh Corps was looked upon as a ruse. To myfl^estion, if they had suffered much, he said that they had been badly cutthat General Jackson had been badly wounded; also General A. P. Hill ,their chief of artillery. I asked how he knew General Jackson had been^minded. He stated that he saw him when he was carried off the field in ater. This information I immediately reported to General Hooker, when hele cted me to withdraw my command from that position and go into camp011 the north side of the Rappahannock River. It was 4 a. m. of the 3d of