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 punish them all. He was always--after the war--the central figure
of a court-martial or a Congressional inquiry, was accused of everything,
from stealing to cowardice, was banished to obscure posts, "jumped on" by
the press, traduced in public and in private, and always emerged
triumphant.
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