This description of the steady advance of the Southern line applies rather to the first portion of the attack, which compelled the front line of the Federal army to retire to the stronger ground in rear.  When this was reached, and the troops of Lee saw before them the last citadel, the steady advance became a rush.  The divisions of Anderson and McLaws, on the right, made a determined charge upon the great force under Generals Hancock, Slocum, and others, in that quarter, and Stuart closed in on the Federal right, steadily extending his line to join on to Anderson.

The spectacle here was superb.  As the troops rushed on, Stuart shouted, “Charge! and remember Jackson!” and this watchword seemed to drive the line forward.  With Stuart leading them, and singing, in his joyous voice, “Old Joe Hooker, will you come out of the Wilderness!”—­for courage, poetry, and seeming frivolity, were strangely mingled in this great soldier—­the troops went headlong at the Federal works, and in a few moments the real struggle of the battle of Chancellorsville had begun.

From this instant, when the lines, respectively commanded in person by Lee and by Stuart, closed in with the enemy, there was little manoeuvring of any description.  It was an open attempt of Lee, by hard fighting, to crush in the enemy’s front, and force them back upon the river.  In this arduous struggle it is due to Stuart to say that his generalship largely decided the event, and the high commendation which he afterward received from General Lee justifies the statement.  As his lines went to the attack, his quick military eye discerned an elevated point on his right, from which it appeared an artillery-fire woulden filade the Federal line.  About thirty pieces of cannon were at once hastened to this point, and a destructive fire opened on the lines of General Slocum, which threw his troops into great confusion.  So serious was this fire that General Slocum sent word to General Hooker that his front was being swept away by it, to which the sullen response was, “I cannot make soldiers or ammunition!”

General Hooker was indeed, it seems, at this moment in no mood to take a hopeful view of affairs.  The heavy assault of Jackson appears to have as much demoralized the Federal commander as his troops.  During the night he had erected a semicircular line of works, in the form of a redan, in his rear toward the river, behind which new works he no doubt contemplated falling back.  He now awaited the result of the Southern attack, leaning against a pillar of the porch at the Chancellorsville House, when a cannon-ball struck the pillar, throwing it down, and so stunning the general as to prevent him from retaining the command, which was delegated to General Couch.

[Illustration:  Chancellorsville]