William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

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[301] Accordingly on Tuesday, the engineers were instructed to prepare a new line near the river to cover the crossing, and for this purpose they constructed a continuous cover and abatis, from the Rappahannock at Scott's Dam around to the mouth of Hunting Creek on the Rapidan, a distance of three miles. During the afternoon a heavy rain set in which lasted till late at night.

The movement to recross was begun by the artillery at dark of Tuesday, and was suddenly interrupted by a rise in the Rappahannock so great as to submerge the banks at the end of the bridges, which the current threatened to sweep away—a consummation most devoutly wished by many of the leading officers of the army, who were bitterly opposed to recrossing the river. But fate willed otherwise, and in the midst of a night as gloomy as the mood of the army, the troops filed across to the north bank.

The losses in the battle of Chancellorsville can be stated with accuracy. On the side of the Confederates, they made an aggregate of ten thousand two hundred and eighty-one.¹ On the Union side, they were seventeen thousand one hundred and ninety-seven² killed, wounded, and missing. The army left behind its killed, its wounded, fourteen pieces of artillery, and twenty thousand stand of arms.

It remains now to glance a moment at the operations of the column under Stoneman. As this was a powerful corps, numbering some ten thousand sabres, and as its movement was intended to precede by a fortnight the commencement of operations by the army, very important results were expected from it. But the cavalry was delayed a long time by the swollen condition of the upper Rappahannock, so that it did not cross till the time the infantry made the passage, April 29. Hooker then divided the command into two