The daring resolution of Lee, to divide his army and attack the Federal right, followed.  It would seem unjust to General Hooker greatly to blame him for the success of that blow, which could not have been reasonably anticipated.  In determining upon this, one of the most extraordinary movements of the war, General Lee proceeded in defiance of military rules, and was only justified in his course by the desperate character of the situation of affairs.  It was impossible to make any impression upon General Hooker’s front or left, owing to the elaborate defences in both quarters; it was, therefore, necessary either to retire, or attack in a different direction.  As a retreat, however, upon Richmond would have surrendered to the enemy a large and fertile tract of country, it was desirable, if possible, to avoid that alternative; and the attack on the Federal right followed.  The results of this were truly extraordinary.  The force routed and driven back in disorder by General Jackson was but a single corps, and that corps, it is said, not a legitimate part of the old Army of the Potomac; but the disorder seems to have communicated itself to the whole army, and to have especially discouraged General Hooker.  In describing the scene in question, we refrained from dwelling upon the full extent of the confusion into which the Federal forces were thrown:  some sentences, taken from Northern accounts, may lead to a better understanding of the result.  After Jackson’s assault, a Northern historian says:  “The open plain around Chancellorsville presented such a spectacle as a simoom sweeping over the desert might make.  Through the dusk of nightfall a rushing whirlwind of men and artillery and wagons swept down the road, past headquarters, and on toward the fords of the Rappahannock; and it was in vain that the staff opposed their persons and drawn sabres to the panic-stricken fugitives.”  Another writer, an eye-witness, says the spectacle presented was that of “solid columns of infantry retreating at double-quick; a dense mass of beings flying; hundreds of cavalry-horses, left riderless at the first discharge from the rebels, dashing frantically about in all directions; scores of batteries flying from the field; battery-wagons, ambulances, horses, men, cannon, caissons, all jumbled and tumbled together in one inextricable mass—­the stampede universal, the disgrace general.”

After all, however, it was but one corps of the Federal army which had been thus thrown into disorder, and General Hooker had no valid grounds for distrusting his ability to defeat Lee in a more decisive action.  There are many reasons for coming to the conclusion that he did from that moment distrust his powers.  He had courageously hastened to the assailed point, ordering the men to “throw themselves into the breach,” and receive Jackson’s troops “on the bayonet;” but, after this display of soldierly resolution, General Hooker appears to have lost some of that nerve which should never desert a soldier,