SHATTERED REPUTATION

In the fading light of May 2, 1863, the Orange Plank Road near Chancellorsville, Va., was a hopeless tangle of soldiers, wagons, horses, and artillery pieces. Two hours earlier, a little after 5 p.m., Confederate Lt. Gen. Stonewall Jackson had launched his Second Corps against the Army of the Potomac’s unwitting right flank. Now the wood-plank thoroughfare west of Fredericksburg was packed with terrified and desperate men of the Federal 11th Corps fleeing to safety. Heading west against this flow of humanity was Maj. Gen. Hiram Berry’s 2nd Division in Maj. Gen. Dan Sickles’ 3rd Corps, a contingent of reserve units close enough to be called upon to stem the flood. ¶ Moving at the double-quick toward the oncoming Confederates were the 70th–74th, and 120th New York—the famed Excelsior Brigade, whose soldiers had discarded backpacks and other impedimenta before advancing, as the incitement of Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker rang in their ears: “Receive ’em on your bayonets, boys! Receive ’em on your bayonets!” ¶ Hooker, it should be pointed out, never specified whether he was asking his men to give the Rebels or the panicked Yankees the cold steel at that critical moment. Nevertheless, the Excelsior regiments formed a line after less than a mile, deployed at right angles to the road—one on the left, all others to the right. As each regiment arrived, it was “dispersed in the thick woods and undergrowth of the Plank road in a short time, no two regiments joining together,” reported Excelsior Brigade commander Brig. Gen. Joseph W. Revere. Grandson of Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere, Revere found himself at the center of the storm that was Stonewall Jackson’s rout of the 11th Corps. In addition to the serious threat facing the Army of the Potomac, personal disharmony lay ahead for Revere.

Revere, who had served in the U.S. Navy in his younger