d, in such a
way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and
the Government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but
in spite of it, that I gave you the command. Only those generals who
gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military
success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support
you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than
it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the
spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising
their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon
you. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any
good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it; and now beware
of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless
vigilance go forward and give us victories."

"He talks to me like a father," exclaimed Hooker, enchanted with a
rebuke such as this. He was a fine, frank, soldierly fellow, with a
noble figure, with "a grand fighting head," fresh complexion and bright
blue eyes. He was a good organiser; he put a stop to the constant
desertions; he felt the need of improving the Northern cavalry; and he
groaned at the spirit with which McClellan had infected his army, a
curious collective inertness among men who individually were daring.
He seems to have been highly strung; the very little wine that he drank
perceptibly affected him; he gave it up altogether in his campaigns.
And he cannot have been very clever, for the handsomest beating that
Lee could give him left him unaware that Lee was a general. In the end
of April he crossed the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, which still
divided the two armies, and in the first week of May, 1863, a brief
campaign, full of stirring incident, came to a close with the three
days' battle of Chancellorsville, in which Hooker, hurt and dazed with
pain, lost control and presence of mind, and, with heavy loss, drew
back across the Rappahannock. The South had won another amazing
victory; but "Stonewall" Jackson, at the age of thirty-nine, had fallen
in the battle.

Abroad, this crowning disaster to the North seemed to presage the full
triumph of the Confederacy; and it was a gloomy time enough for Lincoln
and his Ministers. A second and more serious invasion by Lee was
impending, and the lingering progress of events in the West, of which
the story must soon be resumed