Existing comment:
The Flying Dutchmen
The target of Jackson's attack was General Oliver O. Howard's Eleventh Corps, which extended for more than a mile along the Orange Turnpike. The Eleventh Corps was relatively new to the Army of the Potomac. Its 11,000 men included a large percentage of German immigrants--men with names like Peissner and Buschbeck, Schurz and Schimmelfennig.
Union pickets had warned Howard of the enemy's approach, but he had ignored their reports. Headquarters now assured him that the Confederate army was in retreat. Now, as the Southerners bore down upon Howard's flank, the men of his corps broke ranks and fled. Although the general and his officers eventually restored order, they could not restore the corps' reputation. From then on, the Eleventh Corps would be known derisively as "the Flying Dutchmen."
Clutching a Union banner under the stump of his amputated right arm, General Howard endeavored to rally his panic-stricken troops near Dowdall's Tavern. "I felt...that I wanted to die," Howard wrote, "...and I sought death everywhere I could find an excuse to go on the field."
The Eleventh Corps, caught off guard by Jackson's unexpected attack, fled toward Chancellorsville in panic. |