for their success upon good fortune alone.  Such seemed now the only deus ex machina that could extricate the Southern army from disaster; and a crushing defeat at that time would have had terrible results.  There was no other force, save the small body under Longstreet and a few local troops, to protect Richmond.  Had Lee been disabled and afterward pressed by General Hooker, it is impossible to see that any thing but the fall of the Confederate capital could have been the result.

From these speculations and comments we pass to the narrative of actual events.  General Hooker had abandoned the strong position in advance of Chancellorsville, and retired to the fastnesses around that place, to receive the Southern attack.  His further proceedings indicated that he anticipated an assault from Lee.  The Federal troops had no sooner regained the thicket from which they had advanced in the morning, than they were ordered to erect elaborate works for the protection of infantry and artillery.  This was promptly begun, and by the next morning heavy defences had sprung up as if by magic.  Trees had been felled, and the trunks interwoven so as to present a formidable obstacle to the Southern attack.  In front of these works the forest had been levelled, and the fallen trunks were left lying where they fell, forming thus an abatis sufficient to seriously delay an assaulting force, which would thus be, at every step of the necessarily slow advance, under fire.  On the roads piercing the thicket in the direction of the Confederates, cannon were posted, to rake the approaches to the Federal position.  Having thus made his preparations to receive Lee’s attack, General Hooker awaited that attack, no doubt confident of his ability to repulse it.

His line resembled in some degree the two sides of an oblong square—­the longer side extending east and west in front, that is to say, south of Chancellorsville, and the shorter side north and south nearly, east of the place.  His right, in the direction of Wilderness Tavern, was comparatively undefended, as it was not expected that Lee would venture upon a movement against that remote point.  This line, it would appear, was formed with a view to the possible necessity of falling back toward the Rappahannock.  A commander determined to risk everything would, it seems, have fronted Lee boldly, with a line running north and south, east of Chancellorsville.  General Hooker’s main front was nearly east and west, whatever may have been his object in so establishing it.

On the night of the 1st of May, as we have said, Lee and Jackson held a consultation to determine the best method of attacking the Federal forces on the next day.  All the information which they had been able to obtain of the Federal positions east and south of Chancellorsville, indicated that the defences in both these quarters were such as to render an assault injudicious.  Jackson had found his advance obstructed by strong