minous with his official relation to it and his
personal connection with it; what is going on in front of him he does not
know at all until he learns it afterward.

At nine o'clock on the morning of the 27th Wood's division was withdrawn
and replaced by Stanley's. Supported by Johnson's division, it moved at
ten o'clock to the left, in the rear of Schofield, a distance of four
miles through a forest, and at two o'clock in the afternoon had reached a
position where General Howard believed himself free to move in behind the
enemy's forces and attack them in the rear, or at least, striking them in
the flank, crush his way along their line in the direction of its length,
throw them into confusion and prepare an easy victory for a supporting
attack in front. In selecting General Howard for this bold adventure
General Sherman was doubtless not unmindful of Chancellorsville, where
Stonewall Jackson had executed a similar manoeuvre for Howard's
instruction. Experience is a normal school: it teaches how to teach.

There are some differences to be noted. At Chancellorsville it was Jackson
who attacked; at Pickett's Mill, Howard. At Chancellorsville it was Howard
who was assailed; at Pickett's Mill, Hood. The significance of the first
distinction is doubled by that of the second.

The attack, it was understood, was to be made in column of brigades,
Hazen's brigade of Wood's division leading. That such was at least Hazen's
understanding I learned from his own lips during the movement, as I was an
officer of his staff. But after a march of less than a mile an hour and a
further delay of three hours at the end of it to acquaint the enemy of our
intention to surprise him, our single shrunken brigade of fifteen hundred
men was sent forward without support to double up the army of General
Johnston. "We will put in Hazen and see what success he has." In these
words of General Wood to General Howard we were first apprised of the true
nature of the distinction about to be conferred upon us.

General W.B. Hazen, a born fighter, an educated soldier, after the war
Chief Signal Officer of the Army and now long dead, was the best hated man
that I ever knew, and his very memory is a terror to every unworthy soul
in the service. His was a stormy life: he was in trouble all round. Grant,
Sherman, Sheridan and a countless multitude of the less eminent luckless
had the misfortune, at one time and another, to incur his disfavor, and he
tried to pun