Leonidas and his band are drifting dust. The stone lion and the pillar with the names of those that died that marked the battle-mound have crumbled and passed away long centuries ago. Even the blood-stained Pass itself has gone and the sea has drawn back many miles and there is no longer the morass, the path or the precipice. After the passage of more than twoscore centuries in a new world of which Leonidas never dreamed, in another great war between freedom and slavery, this same great deed was wrought again by another three hundred men who laid down their lives to hold back an enemy and dying saved an army and perhaps a nation. Their story might almost be the old, old hero story of the lost Spartan band. The great Civil War was in its third year. Disaster after disaster had overtaken the Union armies. English writers were already chronicling The Decline and Fall of the American Republic. It was a time of darkness and peril. The great leaders who were afterward to win great victories had not yet arrived. Under McClellan nothing had been accomplished. At the first trial Burnside failed at the terrible battle of Fredericksburg where nearly thirteen thousand Union soldiers--the flower of the army--died for naught. There was another shift and "Fighting Joe Hooker" took command of the Army of the Potomac. Through continuous defeats, the great army had become disheartened and the men were sullen and discouraged. It was a time of shameful desertions. The express trains to the army were filled with packages of citizens' clothes which parents and wives and brothers and sisters were sending to their kindred to help them desert from the army. Hooker changed all this. He was brave, energetic and full of life and before long the soldiers were again ready and anxious to fight. Unfortunately, their general, in spite of his many good qualities, did not have those which would make him the leader of a successful army. He was vain, boastful and easily overcome and confused by any unexpected check or defeat. Encamped on the Rappahannock River he had one hundred and thirty thousand men against the sixty thousand of the Confederate forces on the other side. These sixty thousand, however, included Robert E. Lee, the great son of a great father, as their general. "Light-Horse Harry Lee," his father, had been one of the great cavalry commanders of the Revolution and one of Washington's most trusted generals. With Robert E. Lee was Stonewall Jackson, the great flanker who has never been equaled in daring, rapid, decisive, brilliant flanking, turning movements which so often are what decide great battles. Hooker decided to fight. By the night of April 30, 1863, no less than four army corps crossed the river in safety and were assembled at the little village of Chancellorsville under his command. His confidence was shown in the boastful order which he issued just before the battle.