far as Salem Church into Lee's rear; and then, Hooker still remaining inactive, to detach other brigades to drive Sedgwick across the river at Banks's ford. On the night of the 5th of May Hooker withdrew his baffled army across the Rappahannock, and the troops returned to their former camps after the loss of seventeen thousand men.

One of the results of the Chancellorsville campaign was a change in the command of the Second Corps. General Couch had felt outraged in every nerve and fiber of his being by the conduct of General Hooker from the 1st to the 5th of May: the retreat from the admirable offensive position reached by Sykes and Slocum on the 1st; the inaction of the 2d, giving opportunity for the overthrow and rout of Howard's corps; the defective dispositions of Sunday morning; the refusal to support the hardpressed divisions at the front; the failure to throw Meade and Reynolds upon the Confederate left; the defensive attitude of the 4th, which allowed the isolated corps of Sedgwick to be overwhelmed without support or relief. It is a matter of regret that General Couch did not for a little while longer possess his soul in patience. A few weeks more would have seen the army commanded by an officer in whom he had the utmost confidence, and under whom, though his junior,* he would have delighted

* To President Lincoln's suggestion that he should succeed Hooker in the command, Couch returned a sincere and decided

to march at the head of his own gallant corps. One can not help thinking that Gettysburg would have been a greater victory had Couch there led the Second Corps, as at Fredericksburg and at Chancellorsville, while Hancock, as in that event he would have done, commanded the Fifth Corps. The great lack of the Union army at Gettysburg was to be that of capable corps commanders*-a lack most painfully felt after the fall of Reynolds on the first day. Sedgwick, Slocum, and Hancock were easily of the first rank; but some of the others, though all excellent division commanders, left much to be desired. In such a situation the addition of one more first-class corps commander would have been a source of great strength. But this was not to be. General Couch had wrought himself into an almost morbid feeling that he could never again lead his troops under Hooker, to what he regarded as purposeless slaughter. In this spirit, with pain inexpressible, he asked to be relieved from further service with the Army of the Potomac, and on the 10th of June left the Second Corps forever. A few days later, in recognition of his distinguished services, he was assigned to the new Department of the Susque

negative. Neither his health, always delicate, nor his retiring disposition qualified him for such a post of responsibility.

It is only in studying the operations of the Army of the Potomac after Gettysburg, from Falling Waters to Mine Run, that one comes fully to appreciate the poverty of the Army of the Potomac in this respect at this time.

hanna, formed to resist the threatening invasion of Pennsylvania.

By the retirement of General Couch the command of the corps devolved without question upon Hancock. It was with a stern joy at the fulfilment of his righteous ambition, with a glad confidence in his own powers, yet not the less with an earnest sense of the responsibility thus devolved upon him, that Hancock first drew his sword at the head of that body of troops which, in losing fifteen thousand men in battle, had never lost a color or a gun; whose fair fame, he was well resolved, should never suffer wrong at his hands. As when, at Antietam, he was promoted to the charge of a division, he was instantly recognized as one of the most distinguished officers of that grade, so upon his accession to the Second Corps the whole army instantly recognized his full and absolute competency for the position. We shall see in how few days thereafter he was to be called upon to exercise a much larger authority in one of the greatest crises of the war.

CHAPTER VI.

GETTYSBURG.-THE FIRST DAY.

HANCOCK'S appointment to the command of the Second Corps came on the eve of great events. Although Hooker, with marvelous optimism, persisted in regarding Chancellorsville as virtually a victory for the Union arms, he was aware that the army, the Administration, and the country at large held a widely different opinion, and that something must be done, and done at once, if he were to rehabilitate himself in public confidence. But while he was searching the positions above and below Fredericksburg to find some opening, Lee determined to take an initiative which should cause the Union forces to loose their hold upon the Rappahannock, and should for a time transfer the contest to Northern soil. Many considerations urged him to this policy, the same which he had adopted after foiling McClellan's advance upon Richmond. Among these were the relief to be afforded to his own people from the terrible strain of a Union army constantly menacing Richmond; the discouragement which would be produced throughout the North by

repeating the invasion of 1862; the prestige to be given the Confederate arms abroad; the supposed demoralization of the Potomac army by the defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville; the further depletion of that army by the approaching expiry of the nine months' and the two years' (New York) enlistments; the opportunity of feeding his men for a while from the fertile fields of Maryland and Pennsylvania, together with some fair chances of at least considerable initial success, to be effected by his fast-marching, indefatigable infantry.

It does not fall within the scope of this narrative to describe the manœuvres by which the Confederate chieftain, between the 3d and the 15th of June, contrived so to place his army that Hooker was compelled to abandon the line of the Rappahannock and fall back to cover Washington. It was on the 15th that the Second Corps, under its new commander, left the camps near Falmouth which it had occupied with one brief intermission since the November preceding, and took the route for Acquia Creek, covering the rear of the army. On this and on the succeeding day the intense heat and the thick dust made the march most oppressive and exhausting to troops so long in camp. It was under such conditions that Hancock's remarkable power of holding his men together told to the greatest effect. With our Northern soldiers nothing was of more importance to their efficiency than steadiness upon the