BY The REV. JAMES POWER SMITH, CAPTAIN AND ASSISTANT ADJUTANT-GENERAL,
C. 8. A.
stonewall .t^ckbon’scar.
*ho
Major
Jed. Hotchkiss,
e an „°' vn . s tlie “old grayWo,.’ . Wr it e s that Jackson lev a 1<: through tile Vnl-
°n<i m V6U I>a T 8 > ail<1 8cc "
a f J' lai ^issas campaigns.
Ant^ e<lerick Ci ^’ to the1'ouvi.* 11 ' 1 oempitigiL hegen 1 a sott hat for liisWal ’ who > at I'h'f'dr.r-a 9 ”»g, gave him the capsouvenir—E ditors.
hi ■ _
x pfessing no surprise, lie playfully said: ‘‘Well, I thought I heard firing,a,1( l Was beginning to think it was time some of you young fellows weree °ming to tell me what it was all about. Tell your good general that I amSllr<l he knows what to do. I will meet him at the front very soon.”
. h was Sedgwick who had crossed, and, marching along the river front toll3l press us with his numbers, was now intrenching his line on the river road,^der cover of Federal batteries on the north bank.
day long we lay in the old lines of the action of December preceding,J^tching the operation of the enemy. Nor did we move through the next day,e 30th of April. During the forenoon of the 29th General Lee had beenformed by General J. E. B. Stuart of the movement in force by General°oker across the Rappahannock upon Chancellorsville; and during thejjglit of Thursday, April 30th, General Jackson withdrew his corps, leavingjj avl y and his division with Barksdale’s brigade to hold the old lines frompulton’s Crossing along the rear of Fredericksburg.
the light of a brilliant moon, at midnight, that passed into an earlyWu 0 f ( f ense m ist, the troops were moved, by the Old Mine road, out of^gut of the enemy, and about 11 a. m. of Friday, May 1st, they reachedPerson’s position, confronting Hooker’s advance from Chancellorsville,av the Tabernacle Church on the Plank road. To meet the whole Armythe Potomac, under Hooker, General Lee had of all arms about 60,000i 11 • General Longstreet, with part of his corps, was absent below Peters-M t’’ General Lee had two divisions of Longstreet’s corps, Anderson’s, andHaws’s, and Jackson’s corps, consisting of four divisions, A. P. Hill ’s, D. II.commanded by Rodes, Trimble’s, commanded by Colston, and Early’s;
T daybreak on the morning of the 29th of April, 1863,sleeping in our tents at corps headquarters, near Hamil-ton’s Crossing, we were aroused by Major Samuel Hale, ofEarly’s staff, with the stirring news that Federal troopswere crossing the Rappahannock on pontoons under coverof a heavy fog. General Jackson had spent the night atMr. Yerby’s hospitable mansion near by, where Mrs. Jack-son [his second wife] had brought her infant child for thefather to see. He was at once informed of the news, andpromptly issued to his division commanders orders to pre-pare for action. At his direction I rode a mile across thefields to army headquarters, and finding General Robert E.Lee still slumbering quietly, at the suggestion of ColonelTenable, whom I found stirring, I entered the general’stent and awoke him. Turning his feet out of his cot hesat upon its side as I gave him the tidings from the front.