During the battle of Chancellorsville, Capt. Charles Morse was on detached duty as Provost for the 12th Corps. He was present at the Chancellor house n the night before the battle, and overheard Hooker boasting "in the most extravagant, vehement terms" about how he had the rebels right where he wanted them and would "annihilate them" in the morning. Morse was astonished, not by Hooker's language, but by his assertion that not even God Almighty could save Lee. "I don't pretend to be very religious," he said afterwards, "and have got used to hearing almost any amount of ordinary swearing, where oaths are used without any particular meaning, but the awful blasphemy that Genl. Hooker indulged in that night was enough to shock the most hardened reprobate in the army."
Having already been wounded at Winchester and Antietam, Capt. Francis Crowninshield had a narrow escape when a bullet passed through a tree in front of him and struck him in the breast. Entirely spent by the time it hit him, it bounced off with no damge to his clothing. He sent it home as a keepsake.
Less fortunate than Crowninshield was Capt. Gerald Fitzgerald. A former Chaplain of the 12th Massachusetts Infantry, Fitzgerald had come to the 2nd MA when Gov. Andrews appointed him over the protests of the Second's field officers. Capt. Henry Scott conceded that Fitzgerald knew his business as a line officer, but was "alternately severe and indlugent...deficient in dignity and in good sense." Col. Quincy pressured the former Chaplain into resigning but the battle of Chancellorsville postponed the event. Wounded during the battle, Fitzgerald was being carried to the rear in a blanket when a shell struck him, said Scott, "and blew him all to pieces."
Fitzgerald was the only officer killed during the battle. Encountering the dead man's fiance afterwards, Scott did not have the heart to tell her that he had been all but run out of the regiment.
When Capt. Charles Morse observed Hooker sitting on his horse while shot and shell killed men and horses all around him, he was convinced that the mortified commanding general was trying to commit suicide. "I suppose that he felt his utter incompetency for his command and felt that he had better die than live to see his army defeated."
When Lt. Col. William Cogswell went down with a shoulder wound, Maj. Charles Mudge took on greater responsibility in directing the 2nd MA during the fight. Mudge, who had been bounced out of Harvard for his behavior, had grown up. "I was so astonoshed at my coolness and courage, that I could not help thanking and praising God for it in a loud voice while I sat there on my horse," he wrote home. "I had prayed for it, to be sure; but I never believed a man could feel so joyous, and such a total absence of fear, as I had there. I enjoyed it as much as a game or race."
During the battle, Capt. Henry Scott was struck on the head by a nearly spent minie ball. The blow knocked him "flatter than a pan cake" and his sword was hurled 20 feet away. For a few minutes, he "didn't know much of anything," but managed finally to get to his feet. He had been fortunate to escape serious injury and refused to go to the rear until ordered to do so. When he was scolded afterwards by his sister for keeping the wound out of published reports, he responded, "By jingos I shall let it go in next time, 'Capt. Scott wounded in head,' and let you spend the night in wonder whether it is through the skull or mouth or where."
Lt. Henry Newton Comey was proud of his "Bloody Sailors" of Company C. "It was worth a life to see them. After our sixty rounds of ammunition had been fired the cry was: 'Give me more cartridges.'" Any man taking a bullet, he continued, "turned to Capt. Brown or myself and showed his wound before he would go to the rear."
Col. Quincy saw Lt. George Thompson knocked head over heels by a shot of grape. For a moment it looked serious, but "he picked himself up with a bloody leg & said he thought he was all right, & sure enough he was just grazed--a miss was as good as a mile & he stopped the blood & repaired his damaged trousers with his handkerchief."
Pvt. William R. Mudge of Company C, a photographer from Lynn, Massachusetts, lost both of his eyes during the battle, thus ending his pre-war career.
During the battle, Col. Quincy came to regret buying a horse name Kate from Capt. Henry Scott, who admitted that the mare had always been skittish under fire. So badly did the mount behave, that Quincy was finally obliged to tie her to a tree and leave her for some unsusoecting Rebel who, no doubt thinking he had secured a great prize, would learn the hard way what a coward she was.
Chaplain Quint found the published newspaper accounts of the battle vexing but hardly surprising considering the influence and prestige of Gen. Daniel Sickles. From one we should judge that only one particular corps appears to have been engaged in the recent battle," he complained. But, "as General Slocum does not carry a special reporter with him, as some others do, the glorification is less."
It nettled Henry Newton Comey that the divisions of Whipple and Berry "get all the praise for what Williams Division performed," and had to content himself with the fond memory of "those noble fighting fellows" running over him like a "flock of sheep with their backs to the enemy."
Upon hearing the news of the death of Stonewall Jackson, who had been accidentally shot by his own men, Chaplain Quint reported no rejoicing among the officers and men of the 2nd Massachusetts. "He was a good man, though strangely misled by this vagary of state rights; a man of much prayer and Christian experience. A brave, gallant, and chivlaric soldier,--no stain of cruelty or even harshness rests upon him. May God pardon his one fault! I wish we had more generals like him."
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