at position, Couch, whose bridge was all ready to throw, was
ordered to cross, and march in support towards the heaviest firing. This
he did, with French and Hancock, and reached Chancellorsville the same
evening.

Swinton, rather grandiloquently, says, "To have marched a column of
fifty thousand men, laden with sixty pounds of baggage and encumbered
with artillery and trains, thirty-seven miles in two days; to have
bridged and crossed two streams, guarded by a vigilant enemy, with the
loss of half a dozen men, one wagon, and two mules,--is an achievement
which has few parallels, and which well deserves to rank with Prince
Eugene's famous passage of the Adige."

However exaggerated this praise may be, Hooker nevertheless deserves
high encomiums on his management of the campaign so far. Leaving
Stoneman's delay out of the question, nothing had gone wrong or been
mismanaged up to the present moment. But soon Hooker makes his first
mistake.

At 12.30 on Thursday, the Third Corps, which lay near Franklin's
Crossing, on the north side of the river, received orders to proceed by
the shortest route, and concealed from the enemy, to United-States Ford,
to be across the river by seven A.M., Friday; in pursuance of which
order, Sickles immediately started, in three columns, following the
ravines to Hamet's, at the intersection of the Warrenton pike and
United-States Ford road. Here he bivouacked for the night. At five A.M.
Friday he marched to the ford, and passed it with the head of his column
at seven A.M., Birney leading, Whipple and Berry in the rear. Leaving
Mott's brigade and a battery to protect the trains at the ford, he then
pushed on, and reported at Chancellorsville at nine A.M. Under Hooker's
orders he massed his corps near the junction of the roads to Ely's and
United-States Fords, in the open near Bullock's, sending a brigade and a
battery to Dowdall's Tavern.

Hooker, meanwhile, had arrived at Chancellorsville, and taken command.
He at once issued this characteristic order:--

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC,
CAMP NEAR FALMOUTH, VA., April 30, 1863.

GENERAL ORDERS, No. 47.

It is with heartfelt satisfaction that the commanding general announces
to the army that the operations of the last three days have determined
that our enemy must ingloriously fly, or come out from behind
his defences, and give us battle on our own ground, where certain
destructi