Facts You Dont Know About the Battle of Chancellorville

Chancellorsville Campaign: Virginia and the Civil War

Chancellorsville Campaign, aka Boxing of Chancellorsville

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Battle of Chancellorsville Total Killed Soldiers

Introduction

When Lincoln appointed "Fighting Joe" Hooker to the control of the Army of the Potomac on January 25, 1863, Hooker immediately set out to improve the welfare and morale of the command. He introduced corps insignia badges to promote camaraderie de corps in the ranks, and although he reorganized the Federal cavalry into a unmarried corps of eleven,500 troopers under the command of Brig. Gen. George Stoneman to better counter the Southern cavalry superiority, it would prove to be a decision that he bemoaned. Chancellorsville, the 5th deadliest battle of the four yr Civil War, would prove to be Hooker's undoing and it would henceforth remove from the toils of warfare, Lee'south all-time lieutenant, "Stonewall" Jackson.

Hooker commanded more 130,000 troops and 412 artillery pieces, more than twice the strength of Lee in all 3 combat artillery: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. He intended to employ these superior numbers to result a program whereby he would employ a pincer motion against Gen. Robert E. Lee, commanding Army of Northern Virginia. One half of the army would cantankerous the Rappahanock River below Fredericksburg and the other one-half would cross upstream to move against Lee's rear. While each Federal wing would be almost the size of Lee's entire command, the Federal cavalry meanwhile, would attempt to create confusion past operations behind Lee'south lines.

Horrid weather prevented the execution of the plan until late April. Hooker initially misled Lee equally to his true intentions by leaving Gibbon's segmentation in camp while moving the residuum of the army. Lee rapidly discerned Hooker's true intentions however. After watching Sedgwick's men consolidating their bridgehead below Fredericksburg, Lee decided that the main threat was Hooker's flanking column. Lee therefore moved the bulk of his regular army towards Hooker and left Major General Jubal Early with about ten,000 men to contain Sedgwick.

(Left) Joseph Hooker (Nov 13, 1814 – October 31, 1879) was a career U.S. Army officeholder, achieving the rank of major general in the Union Army during the Ceremonious War. Although he served throughout the war, normally with distinction, Hooker is best remembered for his crushing defeat by Robert Eastward. Lee at the Boxing of Chancellorsville in 1863. (Right) Robert E. Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War. Lee married Mary Custis, the slap-up granddaughter of Martha Washington, and distinguished himself during the Mexican-American War (1846 -- 1848).

On May one, Hooker reverted to a rather cautious approach toward Lee. He halted his advance, bivouacked while still inside the tangle of the Wilderness, and then ordered his men into a defensive posture. Had he continued to press Lee in more open country, his superior numbers would have given him a decided reward, especially with respect to his artillery.

With Hooker paused in the Wilderness, Lee and Jackson conceived a bold but risky plan to strike Hooker first. Lee divided his forces once over again and sent Jackson's corps on a long march to plow Hooker's unprepared right flank. Late in the afternoon of May 2, Jackson slammed into Hooker's flank, routing the XI Corps and patently unnerving the at present entrenched Hooker. Tragically for the Confederacy, however, Jackson was accidentally shot by his ain men during the disruptive aftermath of the initial assault. He would dice of pneumonia only eight days afterwards.

On May 3, Sedgwick attacked and broke through Early on's defenses in an attempt to come to the aid of Hooker, but he was checked again near Banking company's Ford and Salem Church. On May 4, Lee launched an offensive against Sedgwick, but could non bulldoze him from his position. Meanwhile, Hooker continued contracting his own lines and constructing defensive fortifications, but afterwards that night, he made a reversal of action and ordered a total retreat of the Army of the Potomac.

Although Lee had desired to press the activeness against Hooker's ground forces, he would have assailed a well-entrenched Federal command while receiving plush Confederate losses in the appointment.

Hooker had cast his lot with Gen. Stoneman, only now, with the new cavalry commander having failed in his endeavour to penetrate behind enemy lines, "Fighting Joe" regretted his decision, insomuch th at he placed the arraign for the Matrimony defeat squarely on the shoulders of Stoneman. Hooker, still, had lost his volition to fight confronting the aggressive Lee and Jackson. The troops of the Army of the Potomac were still full of fight, only "Fighting Joe" Hooker had had enough. He would fire Stoneman immediately, only he as well would receive the aforementioned fate by being relieved of command of the army in mid-June.

Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia

Enhanced Map of Virginia Civil War Battles in 1863

Boxing of Chancellorsville Entrada Map

1863 Virginia Civil State of war Battles

Background

After the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Marriage high control was in turmoil. The repeated frontal attacks on Marye's Heights that had provoked Lee to comment famously on the terribleness of war had also caused "Fighting Joe" Hooker, in protest, to stop fighting. "I had lost every bit many men as my orders required me to lose," he explained later. Such was the standing of Ambrose E. Burnside among his young man generals. They were in virtually open up revolt against the bushy-cheeked West Pointer, and, remarkably, he seemed to agree with their cess. Subsequently all, he had accepted command of the Army of the Potomac just subsequently refusing it twice and and so insisting that he wasn't up to the job. Following the post-Fredericksburg debacle known as the "Mud March," U.S. president Abraham Lincoln decided that he agreed, and he replaced Burnside with Hooker.

Hooker was a red-faced, big-mouthed brawler from Massachusetts with a perhaps unfair reputation for drinking and gambling. Non a fan of his nickname, he immediately prepare virtually proving to a skeptical president that he added up to more than than outrageous boasts and headlong charges. (When Hooker had alleged that what the state really needed, and quick, was a dictator, Lincoln dared him start to win glory on the battleground, after which "I volition adventure the dictatorship.")

Hooker's first step was to reshape his army into a tighter, more disciplined, and more than constructive force. He rounded up the many thousands of stragglers and deserters, issued all the men tastier food, and instituted a furlough lottery and so that they could become habitation in one case in awhile. He got rid of Burnside's cumbersome "Grand Divisions" and gave each of his corps distinctive insignia, which helped articulate up certain battlefield confusions while nudging his men toward something like an esprit de corps. Finally, he centralized his fast-improving cavalry (while, mysteriously, not doing the same with his artillery) and put Colonel George H. Sharpe in accuse of his military machine intelligence. For the first time in the Potomac ground forces's history, its commander knew exactly what lay before him.

Now, as e'er, that was Robert E. Lee, whose army at the end of April 1863 numbered 61,000, putting him at a more than two-to-one disadvantage. Two boosted Amalgamated divisions, nether James Longstreet, were away to the southeast, encircling Suffolk. The idea was to capture food and supplies for an army that was rich with armed services victories merely, due to logistical hang-ups, still hungry and without nigh enough shoes. Lee was well fortified behind the Rappahannock, merely, otherwise, his was not an ideal position. When the fighting started, Longstreet was still too far south to assistance.

Hooker'southward program was to send all but a couple brigades of cavalry, under the command of George Stoneman, on a wide loop to the w and south and into the rear of Lee'southward army, cutting his supply lines. Meanwhile, two Union corps nether John Sedgwick—a force almost the size of Lee'south entire ground forces—would feint an attack in front of Fredericksburg while the remainder of the Potomac army secretly crossed the Rapidan River and crashed into Lee's left flank. By April xxx, Stoneman had gone incommunicado, merely all else was mostly co-ordinate to program. That night, iii Marriage corps under Henry W. Slocum camped in the Wilderness, near an old tavern chosen Chancellorsville, waiting to push east in the morning.

Civil War Boxing of Chancellorsville Map

Boxing of Chancellorsville, Virginia, Map. Courtesy army.mil

At the Boxing of Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee received both his greatest victory and greatest loss. While Lee delivered a crushing defeat to Hooker, friendly burn down from North Carolina troops mortally wounded Stonewall Jackson. As Jackson lay dying, Lee sent a message through Chaplain Lacy, saying "Give General Jackson my appreciating regards, and say to him: he has lost his left arm but I my right." The night Lee learned of Jackson's death, he told his cook, "William, I have lost my right arm" and "I'one thousand bleeding at the centre."

Chancellorsville Campaign (The Battle of Chancellorsville, 2nd Battle of Fredericksburg) was fought May 1–half dozen, 1863, at Chancellorsville, Virginia, just west of Fredericksburg in the Wilderness, and at Fredericksburg. The opposing commanding generals were Union general Joseph Hooker and Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. Casualties during the campaign (including Marye's Heights and Salem Church) for the Matrimony Army were 17,304 (1,694 expressionless, 9,672 wounded, 5,938 missing), while the Confederacy suffered 13,460 (1,724 dead, 9,233 wounded, two,503 missing). Every bit a major battle of the Civil War, Chancellorsville is too listed equally i of the X Bloodiest and Costliest American Ceremonious State of war Battles .

The Chancellorsville Entrada , which culminated in the Battle of Chancellorsville, fought May 1–6, 1863, produced one of the most stunning and ambivalent Amalgamated victories of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Amalgamated general Robert E. Lee had trounced the Ground forces of the Potomac at Fredericksburg the previous December, but since then, Joseph Hooker had thoroughly reorganized and revitalized his dispirited Union troops. Declaring that he had created "the finest Army on the Planet," he set into motility an elaborate plan designed to quietly plough the left flank of the outnumbered and underfed Amalgamated Regular army of Northern Virginia, which was camped non far from Fredericksburg. In the face up of Hooker'southward attack, Lee dangerously divided his army, sending Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson through the Wilderness, a wild and tangled woodland, and around Hooker's right side in what became 1 of the most famous flanking maneuvers of the war. A combination of bad Union generalship and good Confederate luck forced Hooker to retreat across the Rappahannock River. Jackson was accidentally killed by his own men in the fighting, and while his expiry may have been devastating for the Confederacy, so were the additional xiii,459 casualties. Combined with the shocking losses at Gettysburg two months subsequently, they nearly destroyed the ground forces's offensive capabilities.

Chancellorsville Battlefield Map

Civil War Chancellorsville Battlefield Map

(Nigh) Title "Battle of Chancellorsville". Created / Published in 1863. Subject Headings --  Chancellorsville, Boxing of, Chancellorsville, VA., 1863--Maps --  United States--Virginia--Chancellorsville --  Chancellorsville (VA.), Battle of Notes --  Calibration ca. 1:190,000. -- Library of Congress Ceremonious State of war Maps (second ed.), 527 --  Map 1: Dispositions of the Matrimony and Confederate armies prior to the battle of Chancellorsville. -- Map 2: Dispositions of Union and Confederate forces about 11:xxx P.Yard., 30 Apr, 1863. -- Map 3: Dispositions of Wedlock and Confederate forces at iv:00 P.Thousand., 2nd May, 1863. --  Each map indicates Spousal relationship and Amalgamated troop positions, roads, railroads, towns, drainage, fords, and a few houses and names of inhabitants. --  Clarification derived from published bibliography. Maps enhanced for clarity. Library of Congress.

Timeline

April 14, 1863- Marriage cavalry general George Stoneman begins to cross the Rappahannock River. His mission—what will come to be known every bit Stoneman's Raid—is to make a wide loop to the w and south and into the rear of Robert Eastward. Lee'due south Confederate army, cut its supply lines.

April 15, 1863- Bad conditions forces Union cavalry general George Stoneman to retreat north across the Rappahannock River.

April 27–29, 1863- Afterward two weeks of bad weather and delays, Union cavalry general George Stoneman finally leads his troopers across the Rappahannock River on their raid behind Confederate lines. Spousal relationship commander Joseph Hooker'south goal is to outflank Robert E. Lee'due south Confederates due east of the vast Virginia scrub woods known as the Wilderness.

April 30, 1863- The Union Fifth, Eleventh, and 12th corps reunite on the south side of the Rappahannock River and march east in an attempt to outflank Robert East. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. That night, the troops camp in the Wilderness, a wild and tangled woodland, almost an sometime tavern called Chancellorsville.

April 30, 1863- Past this day, raiding cavalrymen under Union general George Stoneman have lost touch with Union commander Joseph Hooker. Their mission is to cut Confederate supply lines.

May 1, 1863- Confederate general Robert E. Lee divides his army, leaving a pocket-size force in Fredericksburg and marching the residue w to face up advancing Union troops. The ii armies clash near Chancellorsville in a day of fierce fighting.

May ane, 1863, evening- Spousal relationship commander Joseph Hooker instructs the Eleventh Corps, on the army's far correct flank, to dig in. Confederate generals Robert East. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson notice the flank's weakness and make plans to assail it.

May ii, 1863, 7 a.g.–5:30 p.thou.- Confederate general Robert Due east. Lee divides his army a second time. He sends 29,400 men under Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson twelve miles through the dense wood known equally the Wilderness and around to the Matrimony right flank. He leaves himself fewer than 15,000 men to face up down the bulk of the Marriage army.

May 2, 1863, morn- Spousal relationship observers in tall trees spot the Confederate flanking march through the Wilderness as the troops head through a immigration almost Catharine Furnace. Union commander Joseph Hooker assumes that Cavalry General George Stoneman has been successful in cutting off the Confederate supply line. He announces that Robert E. Lee is in retreat.

May 2, 1863, Noon–5:thirty p.m.- Parts of the Union 3rd Corps attempt to attack Confederate troops on the march against the Union'south exposed right flank. The attack, at a immigration in the Wilderness near Catharine Furnace, is browbeaten back past Confederates nether the personal command of Robert E. Lee.

May 2, 1863, v:30 p.m.- Confederate troops nether Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, having marched all 24-hour interval around the Union right flank, attack and rout the German immigrants who make upwards the Union Eleventh Corps.

May 2, 1863, 9:30 p.thou.- At the cease of one of the bloodiest days of the Civil War, Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson is accidentally shot by North Carolina infantrymen. His next in command, A. P. Hill, is also wounded. Leadership of the Amalgamated 2nd Corps is transferred to the cavalry general J. Eastward. B. Stuart.

May 3, 1863- J. E. B. Stuart, eventually reuniting his corps with Confederates under the direct control of Robert E. Lee, launches a brutal frontal attack confronting Union forces under Joseph Hooker.

May iii, 1863, afternoon- After days of delay, the Matrimony Sixth Corps under John Sedgwick attacks the Confederate troops, commanded past Jubal A. Early, defending Marye's Heights near Fredericksburg. Robert Due east. Lee marches a modest force east to prevent Sedgwick's men from reuniting with the rest of the Spousal relationship ground forces.

May 4, 1863- The Union 6th Corps under John Sedgwick continues to battle Confederate troops under Jubal A. Early effectually Fredericksburg. The bloody fighting near Chancellorsville, meanwhile, has finally stopped.

May 5, 1863, pre-dawn- The result of a miscommunication, the Union Sixth Corps nether John Sedgwick retreats northward across the Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg. Days of tough fighting, frayed nerves, and the fear that Confederate reinforcements under James Longstreet might soon arrive contribute to Sedgwick'south premature action.

May 6, 1863- When he learns that the Sixth Corps had retreated across the Rappahannock River the twenty-four hour period before, Marriage commander Joseph Hooker realizes that the Battle of Chancellorsville is finished. He follows Sedgwick n with the rest of his army.

May 10, 1863, 3:15 p.m.- Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson dies of pneumonia at Fairfield, the home of Thomas and Mary Chandler, having spoken equally his last recorded words: "Permit us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."

Battle of Chancellorsville

Confederate expressionless during Chancellorsville Entrada

(About) Photograph of Confederate expressionless backside the stone wall of Marye'due south Heights, Fredericksburg, Virginia, killed during the Chancellorsville Campaign in May 1863. Marye's Heights is also known as the 2d Boxing of Fredericksburg, Photograph past A.J. Russell. Library of Congress.

The Campaign

Considering of his superb intelligence, Hooker's knowledge of Lee'due south order of boxing rivaled that of historians a hundred and fifty years afterward, but without cavalry, he could not follow the Confederates or even find them. His men, in the words of British historian Brian Holden Reid, "stumbled nearly like partygoers pushed from a brightly lit anteroom into a deep, pitch-black cellar." When they stumbled into Stonewall Jackson's Second Corps while even so surrounded by the virtually bulletproof brambles of the Wilderness—a pitch-black cellar is correct—they were startled into falling back. By nightfall on May 1, later a fierce day of fighting, Hooker was back to where he had started at Chancellorsville.

An entire school of historians has called this offset day decisive, suggesting that Hooker was too cautious, likewise much in the tradition of Marriage general George B. McClellan. To quote Reid, "The ghost of McClellan had materialized." Bruce Catton was harsher: "Peradventure Joe Hooker had lost his nervus." Stephen W. Sears, in contrast, has noted that Hooker "was neither disheartened nor had he lost conviction in himself or in his program." He had ever intended to fight defensively, to avoid those ugly headlong charges. And while Hooker busied Oliver O. Howard and his Eleventh Corps with shoring upward the end of the line, Lee and Jackson seated themselves on fallen logs and talked belatedly into the dark.

The plan they came upward with was nothing short of a desperate take a chance: Jackson would march his entire corps twelve miles under cover of the Wilderness, past an former iron furnace, and around to Hooker's vulnerable right. (Howard's men weren't actually shoring up much of anything.) Lee, who had sniffed out Sedgwick'south feint from the start, would be left with a skeleton force. The next morning, Jackson's troops were spotted past a Union reconnaissance balloon, merely Hooker was confounded by bad communication. When he finally heard of the march, he announced, with peradventure a scrap too much cocky-congratulation, that Lee must be retreating. In fact, Jackson's men rushed screaming out of the woods at nigh v xxx in the afternoon on May 2 and set the German immigrants of Howard's Eleventh Corps to terrible flight—leaving them forever to be disparaged as the "Flying Dutchmen."

Jackson embodied relentlessness, and with his subordinate A. P. Loma grumbling behind him, he scouted the front end for a possible night attack. That is when friendly fire struck him downwards, also wounding Hill. The Second Corps transferred to the ranking general in the field, the cavalryman J. E. B. Stuart, who, without any other program to work from, threw his troops at Hooker the next forenoon. The fighting was every bit hot and close equally whatever in the war—the vast majority of the battle's casualties occurred on this twenty-four hours—and Hooker himself suffered a concussion when a wooden beam from the Chancellor family unit house cruel on him. Rumors immediately circulated that he was drunk, and historians take argued for years virtually the extent to which the stalemate that followed was a symptom of Hooker'due south decision not to remove himself from command. (Or was it that he lost his nervus once again? A 1910 history of the battle has Hooker telling a subordinate that "I was non hurt past a shell and I was not drunk. For once I lost confidence in Hooker, and that is all there is to it." The historian Sears has thoroughly dismissed this account, nevertheless.)

Nevertheless, with Sedgwick waiting at Fredericksburg, the game was still Hooker's to win. Sedgwick was an old ground forces regular who had been wounded iii times at Antietam (1862), and he did non seem anxious to bound into this fight. Still, on May 3, he sent his Sixth Corps upwardly Marye's Heights 3 times before finally overwhelming Confederate general Jubal A. Early's outnumbered Mississippians. Then much for avoiding headlong charges, even if this Second Battle of Fredericksburg was more successful for the Army of the Potomac than the outset. Lee was forced to rush reinforcements from the Wilderness. Those men, combined with bad communication, frayed fretfulness, and the fear of Longstreet's men finally appearing from the south like avenging ghosts, forced Sedgwick to retreat beyond the Rappahannock early in the forenoon on May v. The next 24-hour interval—with the battle not quite lost and the Union troops certainly not feeling whipped—Hooker followed.

Chancellorsville Campaign

1863 Battle of Chancellorsville Map

Aftermath

As the battle started, Hooker had promised his ground forces that "certain destruction awaits" the enemy. A few days subsequently, his generals could simply shake their heads. They had lost 17,304 men, nearly as many every bit at Antietam. Worse, from their perspective, was the fact that Hooker had not engaged the whole army—the entire Beginning Corps sat idle for much of the battle. The Confederates enjoyed no such luxury. Time and once more they were forced to commit everything they had, and everything they had usually was not plenty for a consummate victory. Still, a consensus has formed that Lee's incomplete victory, achieved in the face of overwhelming odds and with a kind of preternatural coolness, was the near brilliant example of generalship in the war.

Of class, Lee'due south prey total was devastating, too, calculation upward to more than than 13,000 and weakening the regular army'southward fighting ability fifty-fifty at a time when morale was high. The nigh famous of those casualties was Stonewall Jackson. His final charge assured his identify non simply in history only in mythology. As Lee told the young officer who brought him the news of his general's wounding, "Captain, any victory is dearly bought that deprives usa of the services of Jackson even temporarily." Lee would ride the momentum of Chancellorsville north to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July, but there, his coolness would fade. The fierce and flamboyant competence of his subordinates would stammer. And Jackson's absenteeism—his corps was given to the eccentric and one-legged Richard S. Ewell, nicknamed "Old Bald Head"—would be blamed, rightly or wrongly, for the Amalgamated defeat at the Boxing of Gettysburg. (Historians disagree and the debate has traditionally been waged within the historically suspect parameters of the Lost Crusade view of the Civil War.)

Hooker, too, would be gone. His generals revolted against him just equally he had one time revolted against Burnside. In his ain defense, he argued that Stoneman'southward cavalry raid, which reached the outskirts of the Confederate capital at Richmond and caused a practiced chip of panic, nevertheless failed to cut Lee'southward supply lines. He complained that Howard'south men had run rather than fight. (Howard, who was particularly religious, labeled Hooker "impure" and accused him of swearing too much. That Howard would later exist promoted over him was just one more insult to Fighting Joe.) Finally, he wondered why Sedgwick had not been more ambitious at Fredericksburg. In the end, though, Lincoln demanded results and and then turned to George G. Meade. The army Meade took to Pennsylvania, withal, was better equipped and amend organized than it had been before Hooker. And many of its men did not believe that they had truly been beaten at Chancellorsville. Every bit one Massachusetts soldier put it, "The morale of the Army of the Potomac was better in June than it had been in January."

Credits: Confederate War machine History; Wolfe, Brendan. "Chancellorsville Campaign." Encyclopedia Virginia. Ed. Brendan Wolfe. 31 January. 2013. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 29 November. 2012 <http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Chancellorsville_Campaign>.

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Facts You Dont Know About the Battle of Chancellorville

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