Glory Road (33 page)

The Rebels were beaten back and they rallied and came on again, along with thousands more. The attacking line may have extended two miles from end to end, but the ground was so broken and the wood so thick that nobody could see more than a fraction of it. Brigadier General John W. Geary, former mayor of San Francisco, commanded a division here, and his men disputed possession of a sketchy trench line with some possessive Southerners and got into a bitter fire fight at the closest range. Geary brought some guns forward, the Rebels hit him with their own artillery from in front and from the flank, and finally he had to retire after a fire "of the most terrific character I ever remember to have witnessed."
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Confederate General Archer came up with his brigade, striking at a part of the line held chiefly by the 27th Indiana. During the night that regiment's Colonel Colgrove, a red-cheeked, white-whiskered old chap who was a great deal sprier than he looked, had rounded up fragments of two broken regiments and added them to his command, and early that morning he had pounced on a couple of abandoned cannon and rolled them into his works, commandeering a stray artillery lieutenant and detailing a couple of dozen infantrymen to serve the guns. With this impromptu brigade the colonel was fighting briskly —in his shirt sleeves, as usual—and when the Rebel line came close he took personal charge of one of the guns, calling out to his major: "Here, boy, you run the regiment while I run this here gun."

Archer's men got up within seventy yards and then broke and went to the rear, and a new Confederate brigade charged forward. Colgrove led his men out in a c
ounterattack, and the 2nd Massa
chusetts and 3rd Wisconsin went forward with them, and the Northern and Southern boys got into a blind, vicious fight in the midst of the abatis, where the low branches held the smoke close to the ground and men trying to fight were trapped and could not get free and so were shot or bayoneted. In the end the Rebels withdrew and Colgrove reported exultantly that these Indiana, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin outfits were "the three best regiments I have ever seen in action." At one stage the 2nd Massachusetts was fighting hand to hand with the 1st South Carolina, the two extremist fire-eating states fighting their fight out personally. Afterward a Massachusetts soldier wrote meditatively that although his regiment had been in a great deal of very hot fighting, this was one of the few times they had actually seen their enemies.
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Slocum's regiments had hard fighting that morning. Sickles's men and French's division of the II Corps, put in on their right, had it even harder. They were in line for the most part north of the turnpike, and the Confederates came surging in through the timber in three successive lines of battle, which in the confusion of the fighting eventually merged into one dense mass. General Hiram Berry, proudly leading Hooker's old division into action in the post he had coveted so long, scorned to send couriers with orders to his brigade commanders but rode back and forth delivering his orders in person.

He got too far up front at last and a Rebel sharpshooter in a tree shot him off his horse and killed him. A confused brigadier, noting his fall and thinking all was lost, led his brigade out of action (thereby leading himself entirely out of the war), but Sickles slammed in a New Jersey brigade to plug the gap. It made a hot counterattack, taking prisoners and capturing Rebel colors, but it got into position too far forward, hung on there for a time, and then had to retreat after heavy losses.

Another gap developed, and the 12th New Hampshire was thrown in—a rookie regiment, taking 550 men into their first fight. These took post on a little knoll and stayed there for more than an hour, most of the officers shot down and the men fighting Indian-style behind trees and logs. Nearly surrounded, the New Hampshire boys finally withdrew, fewer than 100 men around the colors, a lieutenant the ranking officer. They came out through a little ravine, and Sickles saw them and galloped up to check the fire of waiting Federal artillery with a frantic shout: "Hold on there—hold your fire—these are my men in front!" He rode up to the lieutenant who was leading the men in and demanded: "What regiment, and where's the rest of it?" Proudly the lieutenant answered: "Twelfth New Hampshire, and
here's
what's left of it."
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Stuart had abandoned Jackson's plan for a continual movement around to the north, to cut the Yankees off from United States Ford, and instead was shifting steadily to his right, to regain contact with the rest of Lee's army. What Jackson had tried to do the night before almost certainly could not have been done this morning, for Hooker had Meade and his V Corps planted right where they could foil such a move, although they were too far in the rear to take part in the immediate action. In any case, Stuart continued pressing toward the right, and the Federals considered that his left flank offered a chance for a counterblow, and French's brigades were moved forward. They made some progress, took prisoners, then came to a halt in the eternal woodland twilight while the Rebels rallied for a new push.

It was beginning to be clear that the Yankee line could not be broken by infantry alone. The Confederates tried over and over, but the Federals were well dug in, it was hard to keep an attacking line in order in the thick woods, and the artillery back by Fairview Cemetery was a mighty power. But the high clearing at Hazel Grove had passed under Confederate control and Stuart had a smart gunner working for him that morning, Colonel E. P. Alexander, and Alexander had been running battery after battery up onto this plateau ever since the Yankees left. By midmorning these guns were taking charge. They enfiladed a good part of the Union infantry line, they hit the Federal gunners at Fairview paralyzing blows, and they blew shot and shell all over the Chancellorsville clearing, disrupting supply lines and leaving the advanced units and some of the artillery with no way to replenish ammunition. They were aided in this by some thirty Rebel guns which had been drawn up near Dowdall's Tavern and by other guns over to the east of Fairview inside of Lee's lines, and presently all of these guns were taking Chancellorsville and evervthing near it under an overwhelming converging fire.
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The 8th Ohio, which had been left behind as artillery support when French's brigades went forward, was posted in a thick oak swamp toward the right of the line, and it reported that shell seemed to be coming in from all directions at once. The lines began to dissolve under this fire, the woods were full of fugitives looking desperately for the rear, and all of the narrow roads were choked with wagons, artillery, ambulances, stray detachments of cavalry, and frantic droves of beef cattle. The woods were on fire in a dozen places, underbrush blazing furiously, flames creeping up to the crown of the taller trees. The air grew unendurably hot, and the heavy wood smoke mixed with the battle smoke under the trees, almost suffocating the fighting men. From the south and east Lee's men kept edging in closer, rolling their guns forward and putting the crossroads under additional fire. The smoke went billowing upward, and the day was muggy and close and a monstrous clamor of exploding powder and clanging metal and shouting men went up the sky, while the starred Confederate battle flags came tossing closer and closer through the broken timber.
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Out in the open men fought in a blinding fog, and as they fought, in a clearing by the turnpike there appeared in the front lines a young woman, one of the characters of the III Corps, gentle, respected Annie Etheridge, who wore a black riding habit with a sergeant's chevrons and who had been part of the army since the early days of the war.

Annie had gone to war with the 3rd Michigan as a laundress. When the regiment first left Washington to go to the front, the other laundresses went home, but she stuck with the regiment, sharing its marches and its bivouacs. It is recorded that she was "a young and remarkably attractive girl," that she was "modest, quiet, and industrious," and that any soldier who dared to utter a disrespectful word to or about her had to fight the entire 3rd Michigan. Gallant Phil Kearny saw her, after a battle on the peninsula, caring for wounded men at a front-line dressing station, and he more or less adopted her into the division, providing her with a horse and saddle and a sergeant's pay and detailing her officially as cook for the officers' mess.

This morning, in the hottest of the fighting, Annie came riding forward with a sack of hardtack and a dozen canteens of hot coffee, and she trotted brightly up to a busy general and his staff and offered refreshments. The officers tried to shoo her back to safety, but she refused to budge until each one had had something to eat and drink. The Rebel bombardment was at its worst, and three horses in this mounted group were smashed by solid shot while she was about this business, but an admiring Pennsylvania soldier who watched it all wrote that "she never flinched or betrayed the slightest emotion of fear." A bit later she appeared from nowhere beside an all but disabled Union battery which had lost all of its horses, several caissons, and a good many men. The gunners were about to abandon their pieces, but Annie talked them out of it. She smiled at them and cried, "That's right, boys—now you've got good range, keep it up and you'll soon silence those guns." The men raised a little cheer, made her go to the rear, and returned to the service of their guns. One sweaty cannoneer remarked that all the officers in the army could not have had as much influence with them just then as "that brave little sergeant in petticoats."
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The Confederate fire grew heavier and heavier, scourging the length and breadth of the Chancellorsville clearing, breaking up battery after battery in the line by the cemetery. One shot split a wooden pillar on the veranda of the Chancellorsville mansion. Hooker was leaning against it at the time, and the shock threw him to the ground heavily, stunning him. His favorite specific, brandy, was brought to him as he lay on a blanket his staff had spread out for him, and he revived and got to his feet—just in time, because a cannon ball came along and ripped through the blanket where he had been lying. Other shells went through the mansion itself, where surgeons had taken doors off their hinges and set them up on top of chairs for operating tables. One shell killed a man while a doctor was operating on him, others set the building on fire, and Hancock detailed the 2nd Delaware to get the wounded out. All around the building the ground was plowed up by the vicious missiles, and wounded men who had been carried from the burning building were killed as they lay helpless on the ground.
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Hooker was taken to a tent half a mile behind the crossroads, and he sent for General Couch. Other officers took heart when this happened. Couch was a desperate fighter, and if Hooker turned the command over to him he would unquestionably call some of the unemployed troops into action and turn the tables. But Hooker did not do that. He instructed Couch to take temporary command, but only for the purpose of withdrawing the men to a new defensive line back behind the crossroads, covering the road to United States Ford. Couch came out of the tent, disappointment visible on his face. Meade, who had been standing by hopeful that Couch would tell him to lead his corps forward, turned away dejected.
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The withdrawal began, and it fell to the lot of Hancock to cover the retreat.

Hancock had his division in line facing east, covering the turnpike from the direction of Fredericksburg. Lee's men had been pressing him all morning, but as the troops behind him caved in, Hancock's division began to get all of it, and the right wing had to be pulled far back. Before long the division was formed in two separate lines, back to back, only a few hundred yards apart. The last of the guns went away from Fairview, Stuart's and Lee's troops made contact with each other, and an enormous horseshoe of fire encircled Hancock's division, with shell coming in from every point of the compass except the sector between northeast and northwest.

Hancock was bor
n
for moments like this. He had a thundering voice and an unrivaled command of
profane army idiom. The II
Corps treasured for the rest of the war the way he had exploded the evening before when a panicked soldier from Howard's corps, still fresh after a two-mile run from the Rebels, dashed up to him in confusion and asked to be directed to the road leading to the river pontoon bridges and ultimate safety. (The corps historian noted primly of his answer that "it is best not to put it into cold and unsympathetic type.")
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To the east, Nelson Miles held an advanced skirmish line, and he boldly rode his horse up and down the line immediately behind the men, holding them to their work. It was an effective stunt—the men liked to know that a ranking officer was up front with them, taking what they had to take—but it took an uncommon amount of nerve, because the infantry on both sides usually fired just a little high and the man on horseback was right where he could get the worst of it. Miles seemed to glory in it, and once Hancock sent an aide spurring forward to tell him that he was worth his weight in gold. A Rebel marksman finally got him with a bullet through the abdomen and Miles was carried off the field, supposedly dying—belly wounds were almost invariably fatal in that war.

Colonel Cross of the 5th New Hampshire, bald-headed and red-bearded, an old-time Indian fighter and soldier of fortune, had been given command that morning of two other regiments besides his own —he was a top-notch soldier, already marked for brigade command— and he had with him a number of stragglers from the XI Corps whom he had rounded up and pressed into service the night before. He was up and down his line this morning, right in his element in this hot fight. He came upon a soldier once cowering behind the useless protection of a flimsy cracker box. He kicked the box out of the way, kicked the soldier and yanked him to his feet, crying that he would disgrace the whole division. When a gun fell silent for lack of cannoneers, Cross ran to it and helped some of his infantry load and fire it.
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