On Tuesday morning Lee returned with his men toward Chancellorsville, and during the whole day was busily engaged in preparation for a decisive attack upon General Hooker on the next morning.

When, however, the Southern sharp-shooters felt their way, at daylight, toward the Federal position, it was found that the works were entirely deserted.

General Hooker had recrossed the river, spreading pine-boughs on the pontoon bridge to muffle the sound of his artillery-wheels.

So the great advance ended.

VII.

LEE’S GENERALSHIP AND PERSONAL DEMEANOR DURING THE CAMPAIGN.

The movements of the two armies in the Chancellorsville campaign, as it is generally styled, have been so fully described in the foregoing pages, that little comment upon them is here necessary.  The main feature which attracts attention, in surveying the whole series of operations, is the boldness, amounting to apparent recklessness, of Lee; and, first, the excellent generalship, and then the extraordinary tissue of military errors, of General Hooker.

Up to the 1st of May, when he emerged from the Chancellorsville thicket, every thing had succeeded with the Federal commander, and deserved to succeed.  He had successfully brought over his great force, which he himself described as the “finest army on the planet,” and occupied strong ground east of Chancellorsville, on the road to Fredericksburg.  General Sedgwick was absent at the latter place with a strong detachment of the army, but the main body covered Banks’s Ford, but twelve miles from the city, and by the afternoon of this day the whole army might have been concentrated.  Then the fate of Lee would seem to have been decided.  He had not only a very small army, but that army was scattered, and liable to be cut off in detail.  General Sedgwick menaced his right at Fredericksburg—­General Hooker was in front of his left near Chancellorsville—­and to crush one of these wings before the other could come to its assistance seemed a work of no very great difficulty.  General Hooker appears, however, to have distrusted his ability to effect this result, and, finding that General Lee was advancing with his main body to attack him, retired, from his strong position in the open country, to the dense thicket around Chancellorsville.  That this was a grave military error there can be no doubt, as, by this retrograde movement, General Hooker not only discouraged his troops, who had been elated by his confident and inspiring general orders, but lost the great advantage of the open country, where his large force could be successfully manoeuvred.

Lee took instant advantage of this fault in his adversary, and boldly pressed the force retiring into the Wilderness, where, on the night of the 1st of May, General Hooker was shut up with his army.  This unforeseen result presented the adversaries now in an entirely new light.  The Federal army, which had been promised by its commander a speedy march upon Richmond in pursuit of Lee, had, instead of advancing, made a backward movement; and Lee, who it had been supposed would retreat, was now following and offering them battle.