at when he returned (if he
did return) he would bring back something good, and he did. I cannot
remember all the things he had strapped to his saddle, but one thing
looms up before my mind now as big as a Baltimore skyscraper. It was
about half a bushel of genuine grain coffee, unroasted. There was also
sugar to sweeten it. Grains of coffee in the South during the Civil War
were as scarce as grains of gold, and when toasting time came and the
lid was lifted to stir the coffee, it is said that the aroma from it
spread through the trees and over the fields for many miles around. I
forgot the long, weary march on foot back up the valley, forgot the loss
of my horse, and really felt as if I had been fully compensated for any
inconvenience that had come to me from the ill-starred tramp of Company
Q.

But spring had fully come, the roads were dry, and the time for action
was here.

Hooker, at the head of 120,000 Northern soldiers, was again crossing the
Rappahannock, near Fredericksburg, to lock horns with Lee and Jackson.

Hooker had superseded Burnside in command of the Union army. They called
him "fighting Joe."

Hooker handled his army the first two or three days with consummate
skill, and at one stage of his maneuvers he felt confident that he had
out-generaled Lee and Jackson. He believed they were in full retreat,
and so informed the Washington Government. But he was doomed to a
terrible disappointment. What Hooker took to be a retreat of the
Confederates was simply a change of front, which was followed up by
Jackson executing another one of his bold flank movements, the most
brilliant of his brief career, the result of which was Hooker's defeat.
The entire Union army was thrown into such confusion that it was
compelled to retreat across the river, after sustaining heavy losses in
killed and wounded.

The New Standard Encyclopedia gives Hooker's army as 130,000; Lee's,
60,000. Hooker's losses, 18,000; Lee's, 13,000.

Perhaps no general on either side during the entire war felt more keenly
his defeat than did Hooker on this occasion. For awhile everything
seemed to be going his way, when suddenly the tide turned, and he saw
his vast army in a most critical situation, and apparently at the mercy
of his opponent.

History tells the whole story in better language than I can. It calls it
the "Battle of Chancellorsville."

Carl Schurz, one of the generals in Hooker's army, says that never did
Gen. Lee's qualities