CHAP. XXVIII.] AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865. 469 



had been fought in their absence, and after three days* 

 fighting, the Confederate general had won the moat 

 brilliant victory of the war, and extricated his army from 

 a most perilous position, by one of the boldest and most 

 adventurous plans of battle ever adopted, and one which 

 was splendidly successful, through the want of cavalry 

 on the part of the Northern army on their right 

 flank. 



Chancellorsville was won by the flank march made by 

 Jackson's corps around Hooker's right, by which the 

 Southern army, far inferior in numbers, di"\dded itself, 

 and placed the Northern army between its two weak 

 fractions. This was successful only because it was a 

 complete surprise. Had Stoneman's 10,000 cavalry 

 been swarming over the co^mtry in the neighbourhood 

 of Hooker's exposed flank, Jackson's columns would have 

 been enveloped and destroyed while winding along the 

 narrow roads and difficult defiles of the "Wilderness," 

 through which his flank march was so successfully and 

 skilfully made. 



Stoneman's raid is a good example of an ill-advised 

 and ill-timed adoption of a course of action, which, if 

 judiciously employed, might produce most important 

 results. 



Had Stoneman turned north when he found himself 

 in Lee's rear, and moved boldly up against his lines, he 

 would have efiected a most important diversion, and 

 might have arrived in the crisis of the battle, when an 

 unexpected attack of 10,000 men in the Confederate reai- 

 would almost certainly have entailed the destruction of 

 their whole army. 



We will now give some particulars of the great Federal 

 cavalry raid under Wilson through Alabama in 1865, 

 which was so successful, and had so important an 

 influence in ending the war in the south-west. 



During the early part of 1865 the cavalry corps of the 

 Federal army of the Mississippi Department, numbering 

 22,000 men, had been encamped on the north bank of 

 the Tennessee, between Waterloo and Gravelly Springs. 

 They were under the command of General Wilson, a 



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