Posted on 05/03/2009 5:01:49 AM PDT by mainepatsfan
May 3, 1863
Confederates take Hazel Grove at Chancellorsville On this day, General Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Potomac abandon a key hill on the Chancellorsville battlefield. The Union army was reeling after Stonewall Jackson's troops swung around the Union right flank and stormed out of the woods on the evening of May 2, causing the Federals to retreat some two miles before stopping the Confederate advance. Nonetheless, Hooker's forces were still in a position to deal a serious defeat to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia because they had a numerical advantage and a strategic position between Lee's divided forces. But Lee had Hooker psychologically beaten.
Union forces controlled the key geographical feature in the Chancellorsville area: Hazel Grove, a hill that provided a prime artillery location. General J.E.B. Stuart, the head of the Confederate cavalry, assumed temporary command of Stonewall Jackson's corps after Jackson was wounded the night before (a wound that proved fatal a week later) and planned to attack Hazel Grove the next morning. This move was made much easier when Hooker made the crucial mistake of ordering an evacuation of the decisive hill.
Once Stuart's artillery occupied Hazel Grove, the Confederates proceeded to wreak havoc on the Union lines around Chancellorsville. Rebel cannons shelled the Union line, and the fighting resulted in more Union casualties than Jackson's attack the day before. Hooker himself was wounded when an artillery shell struck the column he was leaning against. Stunned, Hooker took a shot of brandy and ordered the retreat from the Chancellorsville area, which allowed Jackson's men to rejoin the bulk of Lee's troops. The daring flanking maneuver had worked. Hooker had failed to exploit the divided Army of Northern Virginia, and allowed the smaller Rebel force to defeat his numerically superior force.
(Excerpt) Read more at history.com ...
Keep at it. Maybe the South will finally win the CW.
I guess if you were looking at it from a Southern viewpoint, we had complete confidence in Joe Hooker. :)
Hooker lost the battle the moment he ceded the initiative over to Lee.
Seems the Yankee Senior Officers were no stranger to the bottle. I'd drink too if I was invading a foreign country, trying to "preserve" a union that nobady wanted with grape shot and minie ball. Interesting method the Yankees used for their "preservation" work.
The Rebs had an ooportunity at this point in the war and they blew it. Saint R.E. Lee did not inherit a lost cause, he lost the cause for the South. A more rational plan following Chancellorsville could have worn down Northern political will to fight the war.
Thank God the South relied on their reckless General.
Freudian slip ... “ooportunity” should have been opportunity.
Chancellorsville has been called a pyrrhic victory for the Confederacy by some (the loss of Jackson being the most visible example).
"If it [drink] makes fighting men like Grant, then find out what he drinks, and send my other commanders a case!". -- Abraham Lincoln (probably apocryphal)
Yes, losing Jackson hurt, but the South probably would have cost Lincoln the 1964 election, and thereby won the war, had they simply played defense a little longer.
LOL, 1864 not 1964. No, Lincoln would not have lost to LBJ. Time for me to go back to bed!
The eastern Union armies were reeling, re-reeling, and often retreating until Grant came east, hayna? Or no?
Funny you should mention that very subject because I just finished “1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History”. Good read about what a roller coaster year that was.
It’s telling to compare how Hooker and Grant responded by attacks from Lee in almost the exact same area only a year apart.
Allow me, the "drunken" bastard reponded by trading bodies with the Great Army of Northern Virgina almost 2:1. The Illinois ButcherTM was very proud of his addicted Field Marshal.
LOL, if Saint Lee had the bodies, he would have gladly traded them too. Its called war.
If anything, the CW proved the Southern General preferred maneuver over headlong assault. In general, not always, Gettysburg day three and the Battle of Franklin being major exceptions. Hood would have fit into the Yankee Army quite nicely.
Well there really wasn't much of a comparison between the two generals in terms of competence as army commanders. Though Hooker did turn in a respectable record as a corps commander both before and after Chancellorsville.
Actually, Lee himself said that manuever was the Rebels’ only choice. If the South had the warm bodies needed, they would have thrown them into assaults with abandon.
In short, at Chancellorsville Lee learned that his outstanding tactics, corps & division level leadership and amazing southern soldiers could defeat anything the Union might throw against him.
And now, what Lee needed most to win this war was a decisive, destructive victory over the Union Army in the north. Marching north would also hugely alleviate Lee's shortages of war supplies, and give him a choke hold over such strategic rail hubs as Harrisburg, PA.
So, it was a no-brainer for Lee: march north, gather up supplies, defeat & destroy the Union Army there, put a choke hold on the Union rail system.
Chancellorsville was a "fatal victory" for Lee because he didn't quite notice what had changed by the time of his march toward Gettysburg.
So in June Lee and his entire army marched north, fully confident of victory, not really noticing the small but critical changes which would prevent them from doing again what they had accomplished at Chancellorsville.
In other words: if there had been no Union defeat at Chancellorsville, there could have been no Union victory at Gettysburg.
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