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Chancellorsville at 150By BG John S. Brown

U.S. Army retired

Photographs by Dennis Steele

The period of April 27 through May 6 marks the 150th an-niversary of the Chancellorsville, Va., Civil War cam-

paign, a textbook example of decisive operational maneuver.The December 2012 “Historically Speaking” describes MGAmbrose E. Burnside’s bloody loss to GEN Robert E. Lee’sArmy of Northern Virginia during futile assaults against theheights dominating Fredericksburg. After the debacle, Presi-dent Abraham Lincoln moved Burnside along to the De-partment of the Ohio and replaced him in command of theArmy of the Potomac with MG Joseph Hooker. Boastful andambitious, Hooker had also demonstrated himself to becourageous and aggressive. Lincoln hoped Hooker wouldbe the one to boldly bring the Union’s massive numericaladvantages to bear against Lee’s stubborn little army. Hisadmonitions to stretch Lee to the breaking point includedthe injunction, “This time, put in all your men.”Assuming command on January 26, 1863, Hooker proved

energetic and capable as an organizer and administrator.

Training and discipline tightened. Food, living conditionsand medical care improved. Systematic furloughs im-proved morale. Hooker overhauled his Bureau of MilitaryIntelligence to better integrate information from all sources,including unit reports, scouts, spies, prisoners, deserters,“contrabands” (escaped slaves), refugees, signal stationsand aerial balloons. He reorganized his forces into seven in-fantry corps with distinctive corps and division insignia,and massed his cavalry into a powerful cavalry corps.Oddly, he dispersed artillery that had already been massedback down to corps and division control. He envisioned fix-ing Lee around Fredericksburg with three corps, sendingthe cavalry corps in a deep penetration around Lee’s leftflank, and turning Lee’s left flank with three corps dis-patched across the upper reaches of the Rappahannock andRapidan rivers. Hooker’s cavalry corps got off to a slow start and was

drawn into ineffectual fencing with nimbler Confederate

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counterparts, but his three corps’ turning movement wentwell. By 1500 on April 30, they had sped through Kelly’sFord on the Rappahannock and Ely’s and Germanna fordson the Rapidan to reach Chancellorsville. A fourth corpscrossed the Rappahannock at U.S. Ford and joined them.Here the four corps were but 10 miles from two Unioncorps thrown across the Rappahannock south of Freder-icksburg, with Lee’s army ostensibly trapped betweenthem. The overall Union numerical advantage was betterthan 2-to-1. However, Lee and his principal subordinate,LTG Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, perceived themselvesas benefiting from interior lines rather than as beingtrapped. They earnestly sought to bring one wing of the ex-tended Union Army to battle in the absence of the other.

Assessing the Union forces arrayed against them, Leeand Jackson judged that the two corps across the Rap-

pahannock at Fredericksburg would be the tougher nut to

crack. The Union corps had formed up tightly on defensibleground not far from the river and were heavily over-watched by masses of artillery arrayed along the heights onthe far side. They were well-positioned to defend them-selves, but they did not seem inclined to repeat the assaultsup the Confederate-held heights that had gone so badlysome four months earlier. They were a fixing force. Lee lefta reinforced division dug in along Marye’s Heights andsped west to confront Hooker and his turning movementwith the rest of his army. He correctly surmised that thefour Union corps moving on limited roads through the tan-gled “Wilderness” around Chancellorsville would be inconsiderable disarray. Hooker’s intelligence, including balloon sightings, de-

tected the Confederate movement. The initial collision eastof Chancellorsville was indecisive, but the force of the blow,speed of Confederate closure and concern for the disper-sion of his forces through the Wilderness persuaded

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Hooker to back off and tighten up. He formed a line thatextended along the “Turnpike” to Chancellorsville, loopedaround Chancellorsville and nearby Fairview Hill as a ro-bust bastion, and continued along Mineral Spring Run tothe Rappahannock.

Lee and Jackson, benefitting from MG J.E.B. Stuart’subiquitous cavalry, quickly ascertained that the west

end of this hastily constructed line was hanging in the air.In a daring maneuver, Lee split his army yet again, fixingthe Union front with the smaller portion while sendingJackson on a wide arc with the larger portion. Assailing theUnion flank at around 1800 on May 2, Jackson routed twobrigades and threatened to roll up the Union line. Eager toexploit success, Jackson went forward to reconnoiter hisnext attack. Returning to his own lines in the darkness, hewas accidentally shot by one of his own pickets. He died aweek later, a tragedy for the Confederacy. The Confederates continued their attack the following

day, with Stuart filling in for Jackson. The Union had builtup a robust line extending along Mineral Spring Run to anintersection a mile northwest of Chancellorsville, and thennorth to the Rapidan River along Hunting Run. From thisstout perimeter, their positions around Chancellorsville andFairview Hill extended south like an appendix, with Con-federate troops on three sides. Stuart got 30 guns onto a cu-riously abandoned hilltop over-watching two sides of the

appendix and raked both with enfilading artillery fire. Thebombardment incidentally wounded Hooker, knockinghim momentarily unconscious when it hit the pillar of afront porch he was leaning against. He awoke partially par-alyzed and in great pain, assumed the rest of his army wasin as bad shape as he was, and ordered an immediate evac-uation of the appendix into the more formidable perimeterto its north. Meanwhile, the Union forces near Fredericksburg, com-

manded by MG John Sedgwick, went over to the offensive.During the morning of May 3, they attacked the Confeder-ates defending Marye’s Heights. Several assaults failed, butthen they broke through the strongly positioned but thinlymanned line. The Confederates withdrew along two axes,

A diorama depicting the wounding of Confederate LTG Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson isamong the displays at the National Park Service’s Chancellorsville Battlefield Visitor Center.

Also displayed atthe Visitor Center in

Virginia is a Con-federate battle flagthat was captured

by the 7th New Jersey Volunteer

Infantry Regimentduring the battle.BG John S. Brown, USA Ret., was chief of military history at

the U.S. Army Center of Military History from December 1998to October 2005. He commanded the 2nd Battalion, 66th Armor,in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War and returned to Kuwaitas commander of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, in1995. Author of Kevlar Legions: The Transformation of theU.S. Army, 1989–2005, he has a doctorate in history from Indi-ana University.

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one to the south and one to the west. Sedgwick pursued tothe west, closing the distance between himself and Lee’srear. His advance sputtered to a halt around Salem Churchin the face of darkness and thickening Confederate resis-tance, the retreating Confederates having been reinforcedby Lee.

Over the night of May 3–4, Lee determined that Sedg-wick in motion offered him a better target than Hooker

at rest. He readily determined that Hooker’s troops workedthrough much of the night to improve their already formi-dable position, a clear demonstration of defensive intent. Ithardly made sense to assault such a stronghold, particularlywhen outnumbered 2-to-1. Leaving Stuart with 25,000 tocontain Hooker’s 75,000, Lee sped off to confront Sedgwick.The Confederates who had withdrawn south from Freder-icksburg swung across Sedgwick’s rear from the east whileLee wheeled in from the south. To his credit, Sedgwick an-ticipated the blow, formed a well-organized perimeterbacked by the Rappahannock, and survived until darknessbrought the battle to an indecisive conclusion. Sedgwickwithdrew across the Rappahannock that night. Hooker fol-lowed suit the next night. Some call Chancellorsville Lee’s perfect battle in the sense

of artful Napoleonic maneuver. Outnumbered 2-to-1, hefixed vast forces with small ones and massed decisive su-periority at critical points. His feel for the terrain was mas-

terful, both in getting his own troops through it and in an-ticipating where it would delay the enemy. He achievedpsychological dominance from the beginning, forcing theenemy to react to his moves rather than he to theirs. Hesuccessfully defended the Rappahannock River line, send-ing his defeated enemy streaming back across it. As grandas the victory was, however, it came at a high price. Leelost about 13,000 men while Hooker lost about 17,000, butthe Confederates’ losses were greater than they could wellafford. One of these was Jackson, a blow with profoundconsequences for the future course of the war. �

Recommended Reading

Esposito, Vincent J., The West Point Atlas of AmericanWars, Volume I: 1689–1900 (New York: Frederick A.Praeger, 1959)

Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fredericksburgto Meridian (New York: Random House, 1963)

McPherson, James, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil WarEra (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)

Sears, Stephen W., Chancellorsville (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1996)

Williams, T. Harry, Lincoln and His Generals (NewYork: Gramercy Books, 2000).

Jackson’s flank attack at Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, is considered one of the greatest tactical maneuvers of theCivil War, but later that night Jackson fell victim to friendly fireas Confederate pickets shot and wounded the general whilehe scouted the area. His arm was amputated, and he diedeight days later from pneumonia. Left, a memorial called the“Jackson Shrine” stands near the site of the shooting. Above,Jackson’s amputated arm was taken from the battlefield by amember of his staff and buried in the officer’s nearby familycemetery at Ellwood Manor. It rests there today.