Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/412

380 church, he found Anderson busily engaged, with pick and shovel, strengthening his position. He, in command as the ranking officer present, immediately ordered the discontinuance of such operations, and that an immediate advance should be made to meet the one he shrewdly supposed Hooker was already making. McLaws was sent forward along the old turnpike, and Anderson along the plank road, while Jackson supported the more exposed left of the movement. The two roads thus taken converged at Chancellorsville. As Jackson had divined. Hooker, having started at 11 a. m., was at the same time marching a column along each of these roads toward Fredericksburg; consequently these opposing forces met about midway between Tabernacle church and Chancellorsville, and the issue of battle was joined in the fields along the roads and in the dense intervening forest. Alexander quickly placed one battery from his battalion in front, on the plank road, and sent one accompanying the skirmishers. Lee came up at about this time, and he and Jackson, riding side by side, followed in the line on the left. With wild cheers for these two trusted and beloved commanders, the Confederates rushed forward and drove back the oncoming Federals. Sykes' division of Meade's corps, advancing on the turnpike, was flanked by Jackson and repulsed in front by McLaws; while Anderson turned back to Chancellorsville Slocum's Twelfth corps, with loss, and Hooker's initial action-movement sought protection behind Sickles' line of 18,000 men that held the front of the fields at Chancellorsville. Lee's skirmishers followed until they found themselves confronted by formidable intrenchments of logs, protected by abatis, in the forest in front.

Hooker had concentrated his army in a most formidable position, which he had carefully and skillfully fortified, but he was surprised and mortified that his first movement had been unsuccessful. Informed, by his advance, as to Hooker's position and the disposition of his forces, Lee withdrew his army for a short distance, as the day closed, and his men slept in lines of battle covering the roads leading from Chancellorsville. In person he went into bivouac with Jackson, where the road to Catherine furnace turns southward from the plank road. During the night Talcott and Boswell, of Lee's engineers, reconnoitered the Federal front and