Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 6, 2025
The army wintered between the Rappahannock and the Rapidan. There had been a reduction and reconstruction of its corps, an incorporation of the First and Third with the Fifth and Sixth, with reinforcements added to the Second. The Second was commanded by Major-General Hancock, the Fifth by Major-General Warren, the Sixth by Major-General Sedgwick.
Operations began as early as the middle of March, when General Averill, with about three thousand cavalry, crossed the Rappahannock at Kelly's Ford, above its junction with the Rapidan, and made a determined attack upon nearly eight hundred horsemen there, under General Fitz Lee, with the view of passing through Culpepper, crossing the Rapidan, and cutting Lee's communications in the direction of Gordonsville.
"I have just heard that we shall fall back across the Rappahannock to-morrow, and I imagine there will not be much hard fighting again until spring, long before which I hope you will be in your place among us again. Good-by, old fellow! I need not say keep up your spirits, for that you are pretty sure to do. "Yours truly, "James Sinclair."
By ten o'clock the Chancellor ridge was taken, the blue guns silenced, Hooker beaten back toward the Rappahannock. The Wilderness, after all, was Virginian. She broke into a war song of triumph. Her flowers bloomed, her birds sang, and then came Lee to the front. Oh, the Army of Northern Virginia cheered him! "Men, men!" he said, "you have done well, you have done well! Where is General Jackson?"
Instead of going straight ahead with vengeance and bidding his far left do the same, he ordered and executed a retreat to his old position north of the Rappahannock. There were those who laid this disaster to Hooker's intemperance.
We were now on the same ground we had occupied in June, and the enemy was in force just across the river. As it happened, the fighting did take place, though the cavalry was not alone engaged. Not the day after the review, but on November 7th, Meade advanced and crossed the Rappahannock, while our army fell back and took up our position on the line of the Rapidan.
Instead of rapidity there was great delay, with the result that the early days of December found Lee intrenching strongly upon the heights behind Fredericksburg on the south bank of the Rappahannock, having his army now reunited and reinforced to the formidable strength of 78,288 men "present for duty."
While this manoeuvring was going on along the Rappahannock, General Lee had despatched Stonewall Jackson, to pass around our right, which he did by crossing about four miles above Waterloo, and, on the twenty-fifth, he struck our forces at Bristoe Station, where a severe contest took place, the losses in killed and wounded being heavy on both sides.
Tradition says that he once threw a stone across the Rappahannock at a spot where no other man could do it, and that he could outjump any one in Virginia. He also excelled in the game of putting the bar, as a story related by the artist Peale bears witness. Of outdoor sports he seems to have enjoyed hunting most.
Our homes, it is true, are easily destroyed, but they are as easily replaced. March 13. Details from the regiment, with pack-mules, were sent out to the Rappahannock, to carry rations and forage to our pickets. The mule-train looks oddly enough, and yet through these muddy roads it seems to be a necessity. March 14. To-day I am doing regimental guard duty.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking