On May 1 manoeuvring for position and some fighting took place.  On Saturday, May 2, a brilliant flanking movement by “Stonewall” Jackson wrecked the Federal right.  But the dangerous Southerner, accidentally shot by his own soldiers, was carried from the field a dying man.  Upon Sunday, May 3, there was a most sanguinary conflict.  “The Federals fought like devils at Chancellorsville,” said Mahone.  Still it was again the sad and wearisome story of brave men so badly handled that their gallantry meant only their own slaughter.  The President had expressly urged Hooker to be sure to get all his troops at work.  Yet he actually let 37,000 of them stand all day idle, not firing a shot, while their comrades were fighting and falling and getting beaten.  On May 4, Hooker, whose previous “collapse” had been aggravated by a severe personal hurt, “seemed disposed to be inactive;” and Lee seized the chance to turn upon Sedgwick, who was coming up in the rear of the Confederates, and to drive him across the river.  General Hooker now made up his mind that he had been beaten; and though a majority of his corps commanders were otherwise minded and were for renewing the conflict, he returned to the northern bank, leaving behind him his wounded soldiers, 14 guns, and 20,000 stand of arms.  Another ghastly price had been paid to settle another experiment and establish the value of another general.  The North lost in killed and wounded 12,197 men, with 5000 others “missing,” and found out that General Hooker was not the man to beat General Lee.  The Confederate loss was 10,266 killed and wounded, 2753 missing.

The days in which the news from Chancellorsville was spreading among the cities and villages of the North were the darkest of the war.  In those countless households, by whose generous contributions the armies had been recruited, the talk began to be that it was folly, and even cruelty, to send brave and patriotic citizens to be slaughtered uselessly, while one leader after another showed his helpless incompetence.  The disloyal Copperheads became more bodeful than ever before; while men who would have hanged a Copperhead as gladly as they would have shot a Secessionist felt their hearts sink before the undeniable Southern prestige.  But the truth was that Pope and Burnside and Hooker, by their very defeats, became the cause of victory; for the elated Southerners, beginning to believe that their armies were invincible, now clamored for “invasion” and the capture of Washington.  Apparently General Lee, too, had drunk the poison of triumph, and dreamed of occupying the national capital, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and dictating the terms of peace to a disheartened North.  The fascinating scheme—­the irretrievable and fatal blunder—­was determined upon.