me crashing down as a
trunk was struck full by a shell. The undergrowth had caught fire, and
the thick smoke, mingled with that of the battle, rendered it difficult
to see or to breathe. I had but one thought, that of making my way
through the trees, of finding the corps to which I was sent, of
delivering my message, and finding the general again. No, I don't think
I had much thought of danger, the whole thing was somehow so tremendous
that one had no thought whatever for one's self. It was a sort of
terrible dream, in which one was possessed of the single idea to get to
a certain place. It was not till at last we swept across the open ground
down to the house, that I seemed to take any distinct notice of what was
going on around me. Then, for the first time, the exulting shouts of the
men, and the long lines advancing at the double, woke me up to the fact
that we had gained one of the most wonderful victories in history, and
had driven an army of four or five times our own strength from a
position that they believed they had made impregnable."

The defeat of Hooker for a time put a stop to any further advance
against Richmond from the North. The Federal troops whose term of
service was up returned home, and it was months before all the efforts
of the authorities of Washington could place the army in a condition to
make a renewed advance. But the Confederates had also suffered heavily.
A third of the force with which Jackson had attacked had fallen, and
their loss could not be replaced, as the Confederates were forced to
send everyone they could raise to the assistance of the armies in the
West, where Generals Banks and Grant were carrying on operations with
great success against them. The important town of Vicksburg, which
commanded the navigation of the Mississippi, was besieged, and after a
resistance lasting for some months, surrendered, with its garrison of
25,000 men, on the 3d of July, and the Federal gunboats were thus able
to penetrate the Mississippi and its confluents into the heart of the
Confederacy.

Shortly after the battle of Chancellorsville Vincent was appointed to
the command of a squadron of cavalry that was detached from Stuart's
force and sent down to Richmond to guard the capital from any raids by
bodies of Federal cavalry. It had been two or three times menaced by
flying bodies of horsemen, and during the cavalry advance before the
battle of Chancellorsville small parties had penetrated to withi