William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

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[277] a sling.¹ One division and one brigade—the division of Early and the brigade of Barksdale—were intrusted with the duty of holding the heights of Fredericksburg; and, at midnight of Thursday, Jackson and McLaws, and the rest of his divisions, recalled from Fredericksburg, and from far below Fredericksburg, were put in motion towards Chancellorsville to meet Hooker with a front of opposition, before he should be able, by advancing from Chancellorsville, to seize the direct Confederate communications with Richmond.

If the Confederate commander was able to effect this purpose, it was because the Union commander allowed him so to do; and this voluntary act on the part of the latter devolves upon him the responsibility for all the consequences flowing therefrom.

Chancellorsville, where Hooker had drawn up his forces, lies ten miles west and south of Fredericksburg, with which it is connected by two excellent roads—the one macadamized, the other planked. It stands in the midst of a region extending for several miles south of the Rapidan and westward as far as Mine Run, localized, in common parlance, as ‘the Wilderness’—a region covered with dense woods and thickets of black-jack oak and scrub-pines, and than which it is impossible to conceive a field more unfavorable for the movements of a grand army. But, advancing from Chancellorsville towards Fredericksburg, the country becomes more open and clear as you approach the latter place, and affords a fine field for the use of all arms.

Now, there is evidence that General Hooker did not originally design to allow himself to be shut up in this tangled thicket; and, on Friday morning, May 1st, he began to push forward his columns to gain the open country beyond the bounds of the Wilderness. The two roads running from Chancellorsville to