A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [244]
Henry Hore was up early on May 3, riding hard between Sedgwick’s headquarters and the batteries. Now he saw real fighting instead of the tepid firing of the day before. It was a shock for him to discover that the rebel soldiers handled their rifles with far greater accuracy than his own side. Sedgwick’s troops were flailing until the Federal artillery unleashed its guns. There was such a long delay before the first explosions, wrote Hore, “that I thought [the rebels] would take the guns before we fired. At last came the word: ‘Depress pieces’ and I quite felt sick, they were just about fifty yards or so from my horse who was as much excited as myself.”
The next hour was Hore’s initiation into the sordid truth of war. “Good God, my dear girl, it was awful,” he admitted to his cousin Olivia. “Their dead seemed piled heaps upon heaps, the shot went right clear through them, completely smashing the front of the columns.” Sedgwick ordered ten regiments to charge across the plain toward Marye’s Heights, the same attack formation that had decimated the Irish 69th and so many other regiments in December. But this time there was only a thin line of Confederates behind the famous stone wall, and in half an hour the attackers were up and over, lunging forward with their bayonets. Sedgwick was so excited that he tore a page from a letter meant for his wife and scribbled an order for more artillery. He gave it to Hore with the command to ride as fast as he could and return with every gun he could find. A fellow officer named Hansard, who had abjured his home state of South Carolina to support the North, offered to accompany him.
The two officers were almost at the rear when a Confederate raiding party came crashing through the trees with terrifying whoops and yells.6 Hore wheeled his horse around, hoping that Hansard was with him. But when he looked behind him he saw one of the raiders spur his horse on and reach out to grab Hansard’s bridle. Hore made a split-second decision to turn around. As he did so, the two riders struggled and fell to the ground. Hansard landed on his back. While he lay helpless, a Confederate cavalryman whipped out his sword and plunged it into his chest. Hore watched, aghast, as the raider leaned forward and tore off Hansard’s shoulder straps. The rebel locked eyes with Hore and shook the straps at him. “I now felt as if he or I must be killed,” wrote Hore. Time slowed and each movement became exaggeratedly clear in his memory. He pulled out his revolver and galloped toward the cavalryman: “I had made up my mind I would kill him if I could.” The rebel either had no gun or forgot he had one. When Hore was sure he would not miss, he fired straight at him: “This did not take 30 seconds,” he wrote, “not near so long as it takes me to write. I sighted him along the barrel of my revolver and if I had not killed him the first time would have shot again, for H[ansard] was a good friend to me.”7
Map.14 Chancellorsville, May 2–6, 1863
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Hore remembered little else of that day. Once the Federal army had breached Marye’s Heights, the Confederates pulled back toward Chancellorsville, making a new stand in the woods around Salem Church. Though still outnumbered, the Confederates managed to hold down Sedgwick’s troops. Hore was confused and thought that the Confederate retreat meant another victory. “They have not gained (the Rebels I mean) a single yard,” he wrote, “and we don’t mean they shall,” not realizing that in Hooker’s plan, Sedgwick should have been at Chancellorsville by now, helping to smash Lee’s little army. By this time, Hooker was sorely in need of Sedgwick. Shortly after nine o’clock on the morning of the third, a Confederate cannonball had smashed into the veranda of Chancellor House, knocking Hooker unconscious.