THE CHANCELLORSVILLE CAMPAIGN
However important the operations at the West and South might be, the
vital seat of the war was always in Virginia.
There the contending armies ceaselessly threatened the two capitals,
the conquest of either of which would have been decisive. There both
sides concentrated their best armies. There was present the Confederate
Army of Northern Virginia under Lee, of which General Hooker, after
being overthrown and beaten by it, testified: "That army has, by
discipline alone, acquired a character for steadiness and efficiency,
unsurpassed, in my judgment, in ancient or modern times. We have not
been able to rival it nor has there been any near approximation to it
in the other rebel armies."
And there on the other side was present for duty that Army of the
Potomac which had so distinguished itself for heroic devotion and
unfaltering courage upon a score of desperately contested battlefields.
After Burnside's bloody defeat at Fredericksburg the authorities
at Washington proceeded to swell the Army of the Potomac to vast
proportions until as the spring of 1863 approached, its total was no
less than 180,000 men and 400 guns.[2]
[2] These are the figures given by Col. Theodore A. Dodge, U.
S. A., in his singularly able monograph on "The Campaign of
Chancellorsville," pages 2 and 19.
Meanwhile operations below Richmond had compelled Lee to detach about
one fourth of his force, thus reducing his strength to a total of
58,100 men and 170 pieces of artillery.
There was one important difference, however. In Lee the Southerners had
found their very ablest commander, a master of all the arts of war, and
an absolute master of the hearts of all the men who served under his
command.
The Army of the Potomac had been commanded in succession by McDowell,
McClellan, Pope, McClellan again, and Burnside, no one of whom had
manifested an ability to contend successfully with Lee, even with the
unstinted resources given into the hands of each. The Army of the
Potomac still lacked a capable commander and the lack was for long a
determining factor of the problem.
Colonel Dodge, an officer of the United States army, and a historian of
exquisite conscientiousness and high repute, puts the matter in these
words:
Great as was the importance of success in Virginia, the
Confederates had appreciated the fact as had not the political
soldiers at the head of the Federal Department of War. _Our
resources always enabled us to keep more men, and more and better
material, on this battle ground_ than the Confederates could do;
but this strength _was constantly offset by the ability of the
Southern generals_[3] and their independence of action as opposed
to the frequent unskilfulness of ours, who were not only never long
in command, but were then tied hand and foot to some ideal plan for
insuring the safety of Washington.
[3] Italics ours. AUTHOR.
No impartial student of the history of the war can doubt that Colonel
Dodge here touches the very marrow of the matter. In the operations in
Virginia the North had more men, often by two or three to one, more
guns and incalculably better supply departments. Their men were as
good as the Southerners. Their guns were better, and their materials
immeasurably superior both in quantity and quality. But until Grant was
summoned from the West in 1864 to take command, the Army of the Potomac
was commanded by no general who had capacity enough to make effective
use of these superior advantages in a contest of strategic wits with
Lee.
The real problem which the Washington authorities were set to solve was
to find a general equal to this task, and so long as Halleck remained
commander in chief of the Federal forces, there was no hope of success
in that search. Commander after commander had been set up only to be
promptly and disastrously bowled down again by Lee, in spite of the
enormous disparity of numbers, guns and equipment.
But neither Grant nor Sherman was among those who had been appointed to
try conclusions with Lee.
Halleck was still supreme as the military counselor of Mr. Lincoln.
Grant, in spite of his victories, was a peculiarly objectionable person
to him, and Sherman labored under the serious disability of enjoying
Grant's favor and esteem in a very high degree.
But after Burnside's failure it was necessary to find a new commander
for the Army of the Potomac, and Mr. Lincoln selected General Joseph
Hooker to make the next attempt.
General Hooker was an old army officer. He was thoroughly equipped so
far as military education was concerned, and he was so ardent in the
work of the soldier that his men had lovingly nicknamed him "Fighting
Joe Hooker." But he had never commanded an army or planned a campaign.
He had made the last and most brilliant of that series of heroic
charges up Marye's Heights which Burnside had so foolishly ordered at
Fredericksburg. He had made the charge under protest, correctly deeming
it a needless sacrifice of men's lives in a hopeless undertaking. But
he had made it with extraordinary gallantry and had persisted in it
until, as he sarcastically said, "he thought he had lost as many men as
he was ordered to lose."
Of his devotion as a soldier, and of his unusual capacity in
subordinate command, he had given adequate proof in every battle
in which the Army of the Potomac had been engaged, from Manassas
to Fredericksburg. But his capacity to lead a great army against a
great enemy was wholly conjectural. Mr. Lincoln suggested this in the
extraordinary letter in which he announced to Hooker his selection for
this supreme trust. That letter was as follows:
Executive Mansion, Washington,
D. C., January 26, 1863
Major-General Hooker:
General:--I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac.
Of course I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient
reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are
some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.
I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which of course I
like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession,
in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself; which is
a valuable if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious,
which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but
I think that during General Burnside's command of the army, you
have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as
you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a
most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in
such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the
army and the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for
this but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only
those Generals who gain success can set up dictators. What I now
ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship.
The government will support you to the utmost of its ability,
which is neither more nor less than it has done or will do for all
commanders. I much fear that the spirit you have aided to infuse
into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding
confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as
far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were
alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit
prevails in it. And now, beware of rashness. Beware of rashness,
but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us
victories.
Yours very truly,
A. LINCOLN.
Thus commissioned, Hooker undertook the task in which so many
predecessors had failed--the task of overcoming Lee, breaking the
resisting power of his really wonderful Army of Northern Virginia,
conquering the Confederate capital and adding Virginia, with her pith
and substance, to the list of states reconquered to the Union.
For this task he had more adequate means than any of his predecessors
or even any of his successors enjoyed until Grant, in 1864,
concentrated the whole military force of the nation and coördinated all
its operations with this one object in view.
Hooker had an army of 180,000 men, to Lee's less than 60,000--about
three men to one. He had 400 pieces of artillery to Lee's 170, and
both his guns and his ammunition were superior to Lee's. He had
unsurpassed quartermaster and commissary departments, a matter in
which Lee was wofully deficient. The railroads in Hooker's rear were
in excellent condition, while those upon which his adversary must
depend were well-nigh hopeless wrecks, with nearly helpless engines
and a lamentable insufficiency of cars. Still further, the Northern
army was filled with skilled mechanicians and practical engineers
capable of quickly meeting and overcoming any mechanical difficulty
that might arise. In one case early in the war it is related that an
engine in Federal service ran off the track and was badly damaged,
thus threatening serious embarrassment to a military movement. When
the question arose as to what could be done with the crippled engine,
a private stepped from the ranks, saluted respectfully, and said: "I
built that engine. I guess I can repair her."
The South had next to none of this sort of resource. Nor had it
anywhere great shops capable of producing machinery. The South had been
an almost exclusively agricultural country, in which the mechanic arts
were scarcely at all developed.
With such advantages and others of scarcely less importance, it seemed
a not very difficult task for Hooker so to employ the 180,000 hardened
veterans of the Army of the Potomac as to overcome the resistance of
the 58,100 composing the Army of Northern Virginia. The Government at
Washington expected nothing less than this. The people of the North
demanded such results as their right. The army itself stood eagerly
ready to do the work required, for the Army of the Potomac believed
in Hooker as it had not previously believed in any of its commanders
except McClellan before that general's career was clouded by defeat.
The men had seen Hooker fight. They were in love with his rough and
ready ways. They repeated around their camp fires his witty sayings,
and mightily rejoiced in them. They had indeed none of that filial
reverence for him which the men of the Army of Northern Virginia felt
for Lee--whom they affectionately called "Mas' Bob." But they had for
Hooker an almost boyish enthusiasm which was without doubt an important
element of strength.
Hooker began right. He was a master of the art of military
organization, and he quickly brought the army under his command into a
state of positively wonderful efficiency. Then he planned a brilliant
campaign--a campaign far better conceived than any that Lee had yet
been called upon to meet.
Fully recognizing his own superiority in numbers, in guns, in
equipment, in supplies, in the materials of war and in that mobility
which such superiority necessarily gives, he planned to utilize all
these advantages for the certain and quick destruction of his adversary.
He could force the fighting when and where he pleased. He could choose
his own battlefields and his own time for action.
He had no thought of repeating Burnside's blunder and assailing Lee in
his own chosen and strongly fortified position, at Fredericksburg. It
was his intention instead to force Lee out of his fortifications and
compel him to fight against tremendous odds in the open field.
His plan was, with enormously superior numbers to turn both of Lee's
flanks at once, compel the division of his already inferior army,
overcome both wings of it in detail, and crush it completely. That
done, Confederate resistance in Virginia would be at an end. Richmond
would lie before him a helpless prey. Virginia would be a conquered
state, and the completion of the war a mere matter of detail.
All military critics who have considered the subject, agree that this
was the best planned campaign that any Northern general had as yet
originated and that its promise of success, with the great superiority
of means behind it, amounted almost to a certainty. Its failure in the
end was disastrous in the extreme and discouraging beyond anything that
had occurred since the first battle of Manassas.
These facts taken together--the brilliancy and the entire soundness
of the plan of campaign, the stupendous superadequacy of the means at
command for carrying it to success, and its conspicuous failure in the
end--render the history of the campaign of Chancellorsville one of the
most dramatic of the wonder stories of the Confederate war.
After three months of most intelligent and energetic work in
perfecting organization and bringing all parts of the service into the
highest condition of efficiency, Hooker was ready at last to begin
his campaign. Omitting all the sick, all detachments, all forces sent
to guard communications, all furloughed officers and men, he had "for
duty equipped," according to his morning reports, no less than 131,491
men, with 400 pieces of highly effective artillery. Opposed to him
was Lee with a total force, of all arms, of 58,100 men, of whom less
than 50,000 were ready for duty, and about 170 pieces of artillery,
mostly of an inferior sort. Some small reinforcements are believed to
have come to Lee, swelling his force to about 60,000 men all told, or
perhaps 55,000 effectives.
With numbers so overwhelming, Hooker was free to do pretty nearly
whatever he might choose to do without risk of weakening himself at any
point below the strength of his enemy.
His plan of campaign was simple and strategically admirable. Broadly
stated it was this:
1. To push a strong force of cavalry, under Stoneman, around Lee's
left and into his rear, to destroy his communications, and to harass
and prevent his retreat towards Richmond--for Hooker's plans looked to
nothing less than the capture of the whole Army of Northern Virginia.
2. To send a strong force of artillery and infantry under Sedgwick
down the river to cross there, turn Lee's right, force whatever
might be left of his army, by that time, out of their entrenchments,
and mercilessly assail him in flank on his expected retreat toward
Richmond, thus additionally making his surrender inevitable.
3. At the same time to march up the river with the main body of the
Federal army, estimated by Lieutenant Colonel Theodore A. Dodge, U.
S. A., at 120,000 men, push the head of his column across the stream
far up it, sweep down the southern bank, clear the several fords
in succession and at each to send fresh columns across; then, in
irresistible force to march through the Wilderness, as that tangled
country is called, and emerge from it in appallingly overwhelming
numbers at Chancellorsville.
This would completely turn Lee's left with the main army and force him
either to retreat hurriedly toward Richmond with Sedgwick on his flank,
or to give battle in the open, with utterly inadequate forces.
Never during the whole course of the war was there a campaign more
brilliantly planned than this one was to compel victory; never did one
fail more conspicuously. Never were the advantages of the assailant
so great; never were they so completely offset by the genius of the
defending commander and the resolution of an army vastly inferior in
numbers and in the appliances of war,--in every element of strength
indeed except high soldierliness.
Stoneman moved on the thirteenth of April. His orders were to pass
up the river, keeping well out of sight and masking his movement, to
wheel suddenly and cross the stream at a point west of the Orange and
Alexandria railroad, destroy Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry at Culpeper, seize
upon Gordonsville, where the Orange and Alexandria and the Virginia
Central railroads form a junction; push on toward Richmond; cut the
Richmond and Fredericksburg railroad at Hanover Junction, thus cutting
off Lee's retreat; fortify himself there in strong positions and
obstinately oppose any effort of Lee to retreat, until Hooker, moving
from Lee's left and Sedgwick, moving from his right, should join forces
with Stoneman and complete the work of destroying the Army of Northern
Virginia. This culmination of the campaign was planned to occur six
days after Stoneman's start.
Stoneman made the first failure. He moved up the river and crossed a
part of his force. But high water soon afterwards rendered the stream
unfordable, while Lee's alert cavalry lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart,
confronted the force already crossed, and compelled it to retreat by
swimming to escape certain destruction.
This ended the cavalry part of Hooker's program. For the ford did not
become passable again until the twenty-seventh and by that time the
main movement had been begun. It was too late for Stoneman to do his
part of the work.
In the meanwhile the crossings at and near Port Royal, about twenty
miles below Fredericksburg, had been secured, and bridges had been
laid. On the twenty-ninth of April, early in the morning--before
daylight in fact,--General Sedgwick forced a crossing with three corps.
In preparation for this, ninety-eight guns had been previously placed
in position under Hooker's direction and a number more held in reserve.
Sedgwick's orders were to seize a principal road, turn Lee's right
flank, and in case of serious opposition, to carry Lee's works at all
costs; then to push forward on Lee's flank and harass his retreat. It
was expected that Stoneman would by this time be fortified in the way
of Lee's retreat, and that the main body of the Federal army under
Hooker, moving from Chancellorsville, would fall upon the Confederates
and crush them.
With these dispositions made, Hooker moved up the Rappahannock and the
Rapidan, crossed forces at the upper fords, moved thence down the right
or Confederate bank of the stream, uncovering the several fords in
succession, and crossing heavy forces at each.
Once across the Rapidan he moved his army rapidly through the
Wilderness, to Chancellorsville, a solitary plantation house near the
Southern edge of that vast thicket.
In posting himself at Chancellorsville Hooker had placed his army far
to the rear of Lee's left at Fredericksburg. It was obvious that Lee
must quit his entrenchments and move southwest to meet his adversary
at Chancellorsville, otherwise his army would be completely cut off,
overwhelmed and conquered, and the road to Richmond would be opened to
his adversary with no possibility of effective resistance anywhere.
But Lee had not been asleep. Neither was he appalled by the enormous
advantages of numbers, guns and position enjoyed by his adversary.
With that calm self-possession which was the keynote of his character;
with that masterful skill in the art of war which had so often served
him in lieu of heavy battalions, and which then and since has
commanded the admiration of military men both north and south; and,
above all, with that confidence in the superb endurance of his veterans
which their conduct on many fields had taught him to feel, he set to
work to meet and defeat Hooker's admirably planned campaign.
He left 8,500 men and thirty guns to hold the works at Fredericksburg,
so long as they could be held against Sedgwick's 30,000 men and more
than 100 guns. With the remainder of his army,--in round numbers about
45,000 men,--he quickly moved to Chancellorsville to meet Hooker with
his tremendously superior force.
The great Confederate had by this time completely penetrated Hooker's
plan of campaign. He had no idea that the 8,500 men left in the works
at and below Fredericksburg could for long hold that position against
Sedgwick's superior force, but he knew the quality of the men set
to that task, and he confidently reckoned that they would make such
resistance--as in fact they did--as to prevent Sedgwick from forming
a junction with the main army at Chancellorsville, until the struggle
there should be ended.
And what a struggle it promised to be! Lee knew that at most he could
hope for nothing better than to oppose one man to Hooker's three but
even against such odds he decided to risk battle in the open rather
than attempt a hazardous and dispiriting retreat to the defenses of
Richmond.
Cautiously but rapidly, he transferred his army to Chancellorsville and
after baffling various Federal attempts to strike at his stores and
communications, he concentrated in Hooker's front quite all that he
could of his scanty force.
By this time Hooker's ceaseless activity had uncovered all the fords
above Fredericksburg, and opened short and easy lines of communication,
through Falmouth opposite Fredericksburg, between Sedgwick, operating
on the east of Fredericksburg, and Hooker's headquarters near
Chancellorsville on the southwest. Thus the two temporarily divided
wings of Hooker's army were brought again into touch with each other
and the whole vast force acted as a unit under Hooker's command, while
its disposition was such as to compel Lee to divide his much smaller
force in preparation for the expected determined assault of the
Federals upon one or the other of two faces--he could not know which.
But it was not Lee's purpose long to await attack. His all-daring
thought was to become himself the assailant as soon as he could get his
army corps disposed in positions favorable to such a purpose.
He first selected a strong defensive position in front of
Chancellorsville and hurriedly fortified it as a means of holding
Hooker in check until he should himself be ready to take the offensive.
In the meanwhile, as his orders issued at that time clearly show,
Hooker regarded his campaign as already completely successful. He had
succeeded in so enveloping Lee that that general, according to all the
rules of the war game must surrender either after a show of fighting or
without that bloody preliminary.
In these calculations Hooker had not sufficiently reckoned upon Lee's
resourcefulness or his daring, or the fighting qualities of the Army
of Northern Virginia. All these were factors underestimated in his
statement of the equation.
The position at Chancellorsville itself was a conspicuously bad one for
the Federals if they should stand on the defensive, and Hooker, seeing
this, pushed his forces forward to more advantageous ground, a movement
which involved a good deal of fighting in a comparatively small way,
for the Confederates not only resisted stoutly but manifested a
fiercely aggressive disposition wherever opportunity offered for a
fight.
For reasons that have never been disclosed Hooker after a time
withdrew his advance columns to their old unfavorable position at
Chancellorsville and awaited his opportunity. His force was so greatly
superior to that of his adversary that there seemed no risk in doing
this, although it sacrificed a distinct advantage. It was obvious that
if Lee should make a front attack he must be beaten off and crushed
while, with his already inferior force, it would be simple madness,
Hooker thought, for his opponent to divide his army and attempt any
flank movement against an army outnumbering his own by three to one.
That madness Lee deliberately adopted as his strategy, and he carried
it to a conclusion that must always be an astonishment to the reader of
history.
Hooker's extraordinary retirement from the front of an enemy whom he
had come out for the express purpose of attacking in overwhelming
force, has always been inexplicable. Why he shrank from the attack
after seeking opportunity for it with so much energy and skill it is
impossible to understand. Why he abandoned his offensive operation just
as its culmination in victory seemed certain, and, with enormously
superior forces under his command fell back and assumed the defensive
in an unfavorable position, even he seems never to have been able to
explain. The most masterful critic and historian who has written of
this campaign, says:
At this point Hooker faltered. Fighting Joe had reached the
culminating desire of his life. He had come face to face with
his foe, and he had a hundred and twenty thousand eager and
well-disciplined men at his back. He had come to fight and he
retreated without crossing swords.[4]
[4] Dodge's "The Campaign of Chancellorsville," p. 55.
This was the situation: Lee had had 59,000 men at Fredericksburg. He
had left 8,500 of them there and had made other compulsory detachments
which reduced his fighting force in front of Hooker to no more than
39,000. He confronted Hooker, who had 120,000 securely intrenched with
11,000 or 12,000 more within reach. Obviously Lee could not hope by
direct assault to carry the works and conquer a force so overwhelming.
Equally he could not hope to stand on the defensive against an army
which could easily and certainly overlap both his flanks and quickly
crush him to a pulp. He must either retreat or play a great and most
hazardous game of strategy.
In consultation with Stonewall Jackson--the two being seated upon
cracker boxes abandoned in Hooker's retirement--it was decided to take
a supreme risk in face of a supreme danger. With 39,000 men facing
120,000, it was decided to divide the smaller army and send Jackson,
with 22,000 men upon an expedition, the purpose of which was to strike
like a lightning flash at Hooker's right flank and rear, while Lee,
with the little remnant of his army, 17,000 in all, should so far
occupy Hooker in front as to prevent him from detaching troops for the
timely reinforcement of his threatened wing.
The results that followed this operation have been and still are a
subject of bitter controversy. Hooker tried afterwards to throw the
blame for the disaster which ensued upon Howard, Sickles and his other
lieutenants. They in turn disclaimed that responsibility and insisted
that the disaster was due solely to Hooker's own orders and to his
neglect of obvious duty as commanding general. The skilled military
critics who have since written of the campaign have taken one side
or the other of this purely personal controversy, according to their
lights of knowledge, or their darkenings of prejudice. These things
belong to biography. It is the function of the historian merely to tell
the story of what happened and to that task alone the present writer
addresses himself.
Lee and Jackson decided, as they sat there on the cracker boxes, that
Jackson, with 22,000 men, should undertake to turn Hooker's right flank
and assail him in rear, while Lee with 17,000 men should fully occupy
him by a threat of front attack, and that if Jackson's movement should
succeed, his part of the army should force its way to a junction with
Lee. Failing that, the two parts of the army must of course retreat
in the not very confident hope of uniting again at Gordonsville and
together falling back to the defenses of Richmond. For Stuart with the
Confederate cavalry had utterly broken up and defeated that part of
Hooker's plan which had contemplated Stoneman's sweep to Hanover Court
House and the entrenching of his force there as an obstacle in the way
of Lee's retreat.
On Saturday, May 2, 1863, at daylight, or a little before, Lee and
Jackson began the execution of their daring stratagem.
Hooker's headquarters were at Chancellorsville. His line stretched
eastward and northeastward to the river and westward to a region of
high ground unassailable from the front, where his right lay "in the
air," in military phrase, that is to say with no natural obstacle, such
as a river or a mountain, to defend it. It was Jackson's purpose to
march westward on a route parallel with Hooker's line, turn its western
end and strike it in flank and rear.
To accomplish that he must completely separate his 22,000 men from
Lee's 17,000 and take the chances of battle for a reuniting of the two
forces.
It took all day to make the march. All day Jackson kept Stuart's
cavalry between his column and the enemy, feeling the enemy's lines
to find out how they were posted and what their strength was at every
point.
His march was clearly discovered to the Federal troops, and
fully reported to their commander, Hooker. But it was completely
misinterpreted. It was believed to be the initiatory movement of
that retreat upon Richmond, which Hooker--master of logistics that he
was--thought that he had by his maneuvers compelled Lee to undertake by
way of saving his little army from destruction.
While Jackson, with scarcely any disguise or concealment, was marching
along Hooker's front with intent to turn his flank and strike him
in rear, Hooker rested easily in the conviction that his adversary,
confronted by an irresistible force, was retreating upon Richmond
either by way of Culpeper or by the Gordonsville route.
In this belief Hooker broke the continuity of his own lines by throwing
forward a part of his forces to assail Jackson's moving column in
flank and rear, but he made no effort to advance from Chancellorsville
upon Lee's manifestly depleted force in front or in any vigorous way
to push a column in between Lee and Jackson. He fought Lee on the
skirmish lines all day, but he made no determined attempt to run over
the skirmish lines and find out what was behind them. In other words
he suffered himself to be completely and disastrously deceived by
that tapping at his own lines which Lee ceaselessly kept up by way of
misleading him.
As he knew Lee's strength almost to a man, and as he was fully and
frequently informed during the day concerning the extent to which
Jackson's detachment had weakened it, it is difficult to understand
why he did not end the struggle then and there by hurling three men to
one against Lee on the one hand and against Jackson on the other, and
crushing them separately.
Here was another illustration and proof of the fact that the Federal
administration at Washington had not yet found a general fit to command
the superb Army of the Potomac. The opportunity at Chancellorsville
was the very greatest and completest that was at any time during the
war offered to a commanding general on either side to make a quick and
complete end of the struggle.
Under like circumstances a Grant or a Sherman would have hurled 40,000
or 50,000 men upon Lee and an equal number upon Jackson, meanwhile
employing a lesser but quite sufficient force in keeping the two wings
of the Confederate army divided beyond the possibility of reunion. But
it is conceivable at least that if Lee had been confronting a Grant or
a Sherman, he would never have risked so dangerous a division of his
inferior force. The character of the adversary's commanding general is
a factor in every military problem, upon which a strategist must reckon
as carefully as he does upon the number of that adversary's men or guns.
However that may be, Lee had divided his meager force in the presence
of an enemy who greatly outnumbered him, and Hooker took no effective
account of the fact. He did not strengthen his own right wing while
Jackson was marching around it to assail it in the rear. He took no
effective measures either to assail Jackson on his threatening march
or to fall upon Lee in front in crushingly overwhelming force. He was
content to beat off Lee's pretended attacks in front and to neglect
Jackson's movement as very certainly a retreat with which he had not
energy enough to interfere.
As a result Jackson succeeded in turning the Federal right flank, and
at six o'clock in the evening the great Confederate flanker fell like a
thunderbolt upon the rear of Hooker's divisions on the right.
Without skirmishers to give warning of his coming Jackson pushed his
columns through the woods and the tangled underbrush. So eager were the
Confederates in their work that their divisions, thrown into separate
lines for the forward movement, pushed after each other until the
several lines became a single mass of humanity pressing forward, each
man striving to get in front of his fellow and be first to fall upon
the foe.
Jackson knew his men too well to doubt them for a moment, and he
therefore rushed them forward to the assault without any of those
precautions which the books of tactics prescribe. He threw out no
skirmishers to feel the way. He sent no company in advance to ascertain
the enemy's disposition. He simply hurled his force upon that of the
foe, striking as the tempest does, without warning.
The first intimation Hooker's men had of their enemy's advance came to
them in a rush of deer, grouse and other game that had been disturbed
and was fleeing through the tangled woodlands before the on-coming mass
of armed and belligerent humanity. And before wonder over this rush of
animals, serpents and birds had satisfied itself, Jackson's men, nine
deep, fell upon the unsuspecting Federals at supper, and swept like a
hurricane through their camps and over their lines.
Then occurred the second great panic of the war, in which men fell
into such fear as to lose all semblance of soldierly self-control,
and in which military cohesion was completely dissipated. Here and
there a brigade or a regiment or a company of Federals bravely stood
its ground, but the great mass of that German army corps commanded by
men of unpronounceable names which had been extensively advertised as
intending to show Americans how to fight, fell into hopeless confusion,
broke ranks and ran to whatever cover the fugitives could find. Jackson
ran over their lines, possessed himself of their defenses, captured
their arms and their suppers and completely telescoped the left wing of
Hooker's army.
Night alone saved the rest of it. For panic is more contagious than
smallpox and, in view of what happened afterwards, it is safe to say
that but for the coming of night the panic which so suddenly reduced
the right wing of Hooker's force to a mass of fugitives, would quickly
have spread throughout the army.
But night called a halt and Jackson's men rested upon their arms, ready
to renew their victorious progress with the dawn of day. According to
a competent and adverse witness[5] these men of Jackson's command were
"the best infantry in existence, as tough, hardy and full of _élan_, as
they are ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-looking."
[5] Lieutenant Colonel Theodore A. Dodge, U. S. A., in his
"Campaign of Chancellorsville," p. 92.
But a great calamity was in store for the Confederates that evening.
Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men acting under
orders of his own giving, while he was making his preparations for
the completion of his wonderful work on the following morning. Except
in the possible death of Lee, no greater loss could have befallen the
Southern arms. The destruction of a division or even of an army corps
would have been a trifling disaster in comparison. For upon Jackson
as upon no other man, Lee depended for the masterful execution of his
plans, and equally for wise counsel and daring initiative. The soldiers
of the army, too, had come to look upon the great lieutenant as the one
man invincible, and to regard whatever work he might assign them to do
as a task that must be accomplished at all costs and all hazards. In
the doing of his bidding, the officers and men alike were accustomed
to think of their orders as the decrees of an all-wise Providence and
of themselves as mere instruments set to accomplish the purposes of a
higher authority. No man among them questioned the wisdom of Jackson's
plans or doubted the possibility of doing whatsoever he had ordered
them to do. In such mood as that which their reverent love for Jackson
inspired in them, those incomparable fighters were capable of well-nigh
any achievement.
When it was whispered through the army that Stonewall Jackson was
wounded unto death there was mourning and distress at every bivouac
fire, and depressing sorrow in every soldierly heart. But there was no
thought of failure or faltering in the work to be done on the morrow.
That work had been marked out for them by Stonewall Jackson himself,
and every man of them was resolved to do it or fall fighting in a
determined endeavor to accomplish to the uttermost limit of possibility
the will of the fallen chieftain.
The command fell upon J. E. B. Stuart and after sustaining a midnight
assault upon the Confederate flank by Sickles, which was repulsed with
comparative ease, Stuart was prepared, early on Sunday morning, to
press forward with the entire detachment and force a junction with Lee
in front of Chancellorsville, after destroying or driving into retreat
all of Hooker's forces that lay west of that point.
There was terrific fighting at every step. There were formidable
breastworks to be assailed and carried, and they were protected by
difficult abattis in front. There were superbly served batteries at
every defensive point with determined infantry in support. But the men
who had been Jackson's yesterday, and were to-day under the dare-devil
leadership of Stuart, remembered that Jackson had planned this movement
and they were death-resolute to carry it to completion. They pressed
forward always. A "fire of hell" meant no more to them than a summer
breeze. In face of canister and a murderous fire of musketry, they
plunged onward with no thought of hesitation or shrinking.
Jackson lay under a tree somewhere, wounded unto death, but it was
Jackson still whom these heroic fellows were serving; it was in
obedience to his orders and in execution of his plans that they were
advancing, and their inspiration of resoluteness had for one of its
elements a mad resentment of Jackson's wounds, as an injury for which
the enemy must be made to pay the blood atonement of those old
Scriptures in whose words Jackson so devoutly and reverently believed.
Probably never before or since in battle did men fight with a madder
impulse than did this "best infantry in existence" on that Sunday
morning, in execution of their stricken leader's purpose. They were
very maniacs, filled with fury, assailing the enemy at every point with
truly demoniacal determination, reinforced by all the strength and
skill that long discipline and battle-habit could give to men with arms
in their hands.
In spite of numbers, in the face of obstacles that would have appalled
the best battalions in any European army, these grief-stricken
worshipers of the great leader, swept forward as the hurricane does,
regardless of all obstacles and absolutely resistless in their onward
progress.
Their impulse was indicated by the battle cry, "Charge and remember
Jackson!" which was continually passed up and down the lines by word of
mouth throughout the day, by men with set teeth and lips compressed to
paleness.
Early in the morning it was Stuart's thought to refresh some of his
troops who had been long without food. He ordered an issue of rations
and a pause for breakfast, meantime directing a small advance in order
to rectify the line at a defective point. The men rushed forward with
such impetuosity, abandoning rations and taking the bloody work of war
in lieu of breakfast, that Stuart decided to let them have their way
and bring on at once the action for which it had been his thought to
prepare them by a feeding. The incident is valuably illustrative of the
temper in which that Sunday's fight was undertaken, a fight decisive
for the time, and ending as it did in the defeat and overthrow of the
largest, strongest, and most perfectly equipped army that had ever been
assembled on this continent, by a force one third or one fourth its
number, ill-fed, ill-clothed and exceedingly ill-looking, as Colonel
Dodge has testified in print.
Here it is necessary to make an important distinction, which is often
overlooked. When troops are beaten by an adversary having inferior
numbers, the fault is not always or even usually with the men. It lies
almost always with commanding officers who, through error or incapacity
or otherwise, fail to bring the men into such positions as may render
their superiority of numbers effective. At Chancellorsville Hooker had
quite all of three men to Lee's one--and including Sedgwick's force his
odds were even greater than that. On the part of the so-called German
corps there seems to have been a distinct inferiority of soldierly
quality, while Jackson's men, according to the expert judgment of
Colonel Dodge, supported by that of General Hooker, were "the best
infantry in existence." But between the men generally of the two armies
there was no such superiority on the one side and inferiority on the
other as to offset the enormous disparity of numbers and thus to
account for the result.
The difficulty was that in the great war game Lee was immeasurably
more than Hooker's master. At every point he so handled his forces
as to bewilder and embarrass his enemy. In spite of his inferiority
in numbers he managed at many points, by deft maneuvering, to assail
Hooker's divisions, with more men than they could for the moment bring
to bear in resistance.
In reviewing great battles and campaigns it is important to bear these
things in mind, and, for the credit of a brave soldiery, to remember
that all dispositions of troops are made by men higher up. The skill
and alertness of those men higher up, or their lack of skill and
alertness, determines whether or not due advantage is to be taken of
numbers, the nature of the ground and other adventitious circumstances
upon which the outcome of battles in a large measure depends.
At Chancellorsville, for example, there was one position so favorable
that the artillery of either army, posted there upon the crest of a
commanding hill, could work havoc in the ranks of its adversary. The
Federals held that position when night fell on Saturday. They unwisely
abandoned it during the night and early in the morning Stuart, always
quick to see and alert to seize advantage, occupied it with thirty guns
too strongly supported to be dislodged. In like manner the superior
generalship of the Confederates at other points enabled them often to
bring two men to bear against one in spite of their general inferiority
of numbers.
When Hooker found his right wing crushed and reduced to a
panic-stricken mass of fugitives, he still had the battle in his own
hands and victory easily within his grasp.
After Jackson's blow was delivered on Saturday evening Hooker could
not have doubted that Lee's little army of less than forty thousand
men had been divided in his front. It was his obvious and easy task to
keep it divided and to crush its two parts separately. He had already
thrust Sickles in between Lee and Jackson, and in order to maintain
the separation he had only overwhelmingly to reinforce Sickles, an
enterprising officer. This he might easily have done by drawing
troops from his completely unemployed left wing which stretched away
superfluously to the fords of the river with no enemy at all in front.
The war problem was simple and easy at that time, and had Hooker been a
man of masterful mind, he must have wrought it out to checkmate within
twenty-four hours.
But it is to be remembered that Lee knew all old army officers, and
knew the capacity and temper of every commander sent to oppose him. It
is probable that had Hooker been a man of masterful mind, Lee would
never have attempted the strategy which created this opportunity.
Let us leave speculation for facts. Hooker had unaccountably abandoned
his brilliant offensive movement at the crowning moment when its
success, complete and decisive, seemed certain. Having come out to
force Lee to a fight in the open, he had shrunk from the conflict.
Having skilfully and brilliantly so maneuvered as to place himself
on the flank of Lee's army with intent to assail and overwhelm his
adversary, he had suddenly shrunk back, as if appalled, into a
defensive attitude and had left it to Lee to determine when and where
and how the further fighting should be done. Having advanced from
Chancellorsville into the more favorable country beyond, he had quite
inexplicably fallen back to Chancellorsville again and fortified there
as if he had been confronted by an adversary of superior strength, and
when he clearly saw that Lee had divided his inferior force, he had
over-confidently assumed that retreat was intended instead of a blow.
But even after the blow had been delivered, with staggering effect,
Hooker had the war game in his own hands. It was his obvious policy
to order fifty or sixty thousand men or more from his unemployed left
wing, to Chancellorsville, to fall destructively upon each of Lee's
widely separated detachments, with the purpose of crushing them both.
He did nothing of the kind. Instead he stood upon the defensive against
Lee in front and Stuart upon his flank, and utterly failing to prevent
a junction between these two he retired still further and stood upon
the defensive again to receive their joint assault.
In the meantime he had unemployed troops in vastly superior numbers,
lying idly upon his left. Instead of ordering them into the conflict he
waited for Sedgwick, who was coming up after driving the Confederates
out of their works at Fredericksburg, to save him from defeat and
disaster.
In the meanwhile, and for lack of the reinforcements which he had
failed to send to the firing line, the Confederates had won a great
victory, reuniting their divided army and completely driving Hooker
from the defensive position which he had taken up at Chancellorsville.
Stuart's hurricane-like advance, begun early in the morning, resulted
long before noonday, not only in effecting the desired junction between
the two separated portions of the Confederate Army, but also in the
compulsory retirement of Hooker's army from the entire Chancellorsville
line and its retreat toward the river.
The fighting by which all this was accomplished has been wonderfully
well described in summary, by Colonel Dodge, in his admirably complete
and impartial history of this campaign. A quotation from that work
seems a quite sufficient showing-forth of what was done, with equal
justice to the heroism of the men on both sides of the terrible
conflict. Colonel Dodge writes:
There can be no limit to the praise earned by the mettlesome
veterans of Jackson's corps, in the deadly fight at Fairview. They
had continuously marched and fought with little sleep and less
rations, since Thursday morning [till Sunday]. Their ammunition had
been sparse, and they had been obliged to rely frequently upon the
bayonet alone. They had fought under circumstances which rendered
all attempts to preserve organization impossible. They had charged
through woods against well-constructed fieldworks and in the teeth
of destructive artillery fire, and had captured the works again and
again. Never had infantry better earned the right to rank with the
best which ever bore arms than this gallant twenty thousand--one
man in every four of whom lay bleeding on the field. Nor can the
same meed of praise be withheld from our own brave legions. Our
losses had been heavier than those of the enemy. Generals and
regimental commanders had fallen in equal proportions. Our forces
had, owing to the extraordinary combinations of the general in
command, been outnumbered by the enemy wherever engaged.... Well
may the soldiers who were engaged in this bloody encounter of
Sunday, May 3, 1863, call to mind with equal pride, that each met a
foeman worthy of his steel.
It is in this spirit that the present historian desires to write of the
events of that time, forty odd years agone. All the military skill, all
the heroism, all the personal courage that marked the events of that
struggle, whether upon the one side or upon the other, is a part of our
common American heritage of glory. For these men who fought each other
so gallantly and with such heroic determination, were all Americans,
and to all of them Americans owe the tribute of admiration.
After all these years the memory of their gallant deeds will be
cherished by the whole Republic and all its people, whether the heroism
of daring and endurance was shown on the one side or on the other. The
men who met in battle there were fighting on the one side and on the
other for liberty. Their views differed as to what would best minister
to liberty, but their purpose was the same. The questions that divided
them were long ago settled, and they no longer vex the Republic. The
time has come when we may rejoice as citizens of one country in the
devotion and courage that animated both sides in that great struggle
for the decision of questions that could be settled only by the
arbitrament of arms.
On Sunday, before noon, Hooker was completely driven from the
Chancellorsville line and compelled to retire to a new position of
extraordinary strength. Lee, with an army much smaller and considerably
disorganized, but inspirited by repeated victory, confronted him.
It was Lee's purpose to move again to the assault, in the conviction
that the delivery of another of his tremendous blows would result in
breaking Hooker's resistance and driving him across the river. It is
true that Hooker still had a vastly superior force, but events had
clearly shown that the Federal commander did not know how to handle
his superior forces in a way to make the most of their superiority.
Lee confidently believed that even with his smaller numbers he could
deliver a blow that would drive his adversary out of the new lines as
his previous assaults had already driven him out of the old ones.
The new position taken up by the Army of the Potomac is described by an
engineer officer of high authority as "well-nigh impregnable," and the
Army of Northern Virginia was very nearly worn out with the work it had
done in conquering the former situation. But it was Lee's habit of mind
to do and dare, and he had sufficiently tried conclusions now, to know
beyond all question, that in the war game he was immeasurably more than
Hooker's match.
So about noon on Sunday he began feeling of Hooker's new lines,
searching for the most favorable point at which to hurl himself upon
them in the hope of breaking them and driving his enemy into final
retreat. For Lee's strategy no longer had any element of defensive
purpose in it. He was no longer thinking of defense indeed or of
securing lines of retreat. It was his bold thought to assail Hooker and
destroy him with all his superior forces, or at the very least to drive
him back across the river and take into his own keeping the problem
of where and how the campaigning of 1863 should be done. Says Colonel
Dodge:[6]
[6] "The Campaign of Chancellorsville," p. 156.
Hooker still had in line at Chancellorsville, counting out his
losses of Saturday, over eighty-five thousand men. Lee had not
exceeding half the number. But every musket borne by the Army of
Northern Virginia was put to good use; every round of ammunition
was made to tell its story. On the other hand of the effective of
the Army of the Potomac, barely a quarter was fought _au fond_,
while at least one half the force for duty was given no opportunity
to burn a cartridge to aid in checking the onset of the elated
champions of the South.
So much for disparity in generalship. The South had found its great and
masterful commander, who knew how to utilize to the utmost such forces
as were placed at his disposal. Mr. Lincoln had not yet found a general
capable of employing to the full measure of its capacity, the superb
army which the North had created by a lavish expenditure of treasure
and by the eager volunteering of Northern youth for their country's
service. Ulysses S. Grant was still the subordinate of Halleck and the
Army of the Potomac was commanded by a general utterly unequal to the
task of holding his own in a contest with Robert E. Lee.
In his new position Hooker stood upon the defensive and appealed to
Sedgwick, who held the position below Fredericksburg, to come to his
rescue and save him from disaster.
Sedgwick responded promptly, as it was his custom to do, though the
task set him was a difficult one. He must assail Lee's works at
Fredericksburg, drive out the 8,500 confident Confederates who were
holding the trenches there, and then by a march of some weary miles
fall upon Lee's right and rear, thus rescuing Hooker from the peril of
the great Confederate's persistent assaults.
A whole library of controversial literature has been written in
conflicting efforts to show who was to blame for the failure of
Sedgwick to relieve Hooker in time to save him from the vengeance of
Lee. With that controversy the present narrative of facts in no way
concerns itself. Let us simply tell what happened.
Already in command of an available force twice as great as Lee's,
Hooker, driven from his chosen line, had fallen back to a more
concentrated one. Finding Lee disposed, with one man to his two,
to assail him on this new line, he called upon Sedgwick as already
stated, to come to his relief, against enormous obstacles. The order
was received late at night. Its execution required a complete change
in Sedgwick's dispositions, which had been made with the entirely
different purpose of cutting off Lee's retreat after Hooker should have
broken the Confederate resistance at Chancellorsville. So far from
breaking that resistance Hooker had been forced to yield to it and
retire before it.
Sedgwick changed front, drove Lee's 8,500 men out of the works at
Fredericksburg, and pushed on to assail Lee's flank. Lee detached, to
meet him, all of his small force except the Jackson corps of 19,000
men, with which he undertook, personally, to hold in check any
movement that Hooker might make with the 80,000 or more of hardened
veterans whom the Federal commander had under his immediate orders.
But Hooker made no determined movement. On Sunday a fierce battle was
fought between Sedgwick and those of Lee's forces which were engaged
in trying to check his movement. It ended in the Confederates holding
their ground and defeating Sedgwick's purpose of coming to the relief
of his commander.
Early on Monday morning the Confederates succeeded in reoccupying the
Fredericksburg Heights in Sedgwick's rear, which left him, in case of
defeat, with no course open to him except to retreat across the river
and give up the contest.
To compel this the Confederates, falling upon him at six o'clock in the
evening, pressed him at every point while Hooker, with the main body
of the Federal army, lay quite inert in rear of Chancellorsville. Soon
after nightfall Sedgwick crossed the river, leaving the Confederates
in full possession of the Fredericksburg Heights and of all the region
east of the fords upon which Hooker depended for retreat in case of
necessity.
Lee next set about the task of compelling that retreat. With full
confidence in the willingness and the abundant ability of his men to
respond to any demand he might make upon them for activity, he quickly
ordered the reinforcements with which he had strengthened his right
wing for the day's work, to return, and with the bulk of his force thus
reunited, after having disposed of Sedgwick he was ready to fall upon
Hooker.
During these operations against Sedgwick Lee's army had been for the
second time divided. A great part of it had been sent half a dozen
miles or more away to force Sedgwick back to the river and across it.
In the meanwhile Lee, with a mere fragment of his force, had lain in
front of Hooker. Why Hooker did not fall upon him and destroy him
with the eighty thousand men whom he could easily have brought to
bear against less than twenty thousand, is a question that can be
answered only by the reminder that Hooker was not equal to the task of
successfully handling the marvelous fighting machine which the North
had so successfully created. Great as he was as a fighter under some
other and abler man's direction, Hooker in command of 120,000 men seems
to have been paralyzed by the magnitude of his task. He left it to Lee,
with his greatly smaller force to determine when and where the fighting
should be done. He lay still and let Lee alone while the greater part
of Lee's army was detached upon the mission of driving Sedgwick across
the river and recapturing the heights at Fredericksburg. He lay still
while Lee was bringing back the troops thus detached and putting
himself in readiness to strike that final blow that should break the
Federal lines, drive them back across the river, and make an inglorious
end of Hooker's superbly planned but phenomenally ill-executed campaign.
On Monday, May 4, he had 80,000 men (Dodge) under his immediate command
at Chancellorsville, with more than 20,000 under Sedgwick within easy
call, as an available reinforcement. At the very most Lee could
bring less than 30,000 to bear against him even if every movement in
concentration should be successfully made. Yet according to his own
testimony, given two years later, Hooker decided on Monday to retreat
across the river. He called his major generals together "not as a
council of war" he says in his testimony, but merely to find out how
they felt with regard to the alternative policy of making what Hooker
himself regarded as "a desperate move against the enemy in our front."
That "desperate move" was the assailing of less than 30,000 men by more
than 80,000 of as good soldiers as ever pulled a trigger, while 20,000
more remained within call as reinforcements.
It was decided by Hooker, against the nearly unanimous advice of his
lieutenants not to make that "desperate move," and the history of war
records no more lame and impotent conclusion than that. It was decided
by Hooker that the great army which had made a splendid strategic
movement for the purpose of fighting Lee in the open and destroying him
by overwhelming numbers, should run away from him and escape beyond the
river if he should graciously permit it to do so.
To that end--to render possible the escape of 80,000 resolute men from
the assault of less than 30,000 of the enemy, all the engineering skill
that the Army of the Potomac could command was brought to bear. It
protected the roads with abattis and the bridge heads with batteries
which the aggressively insistent Confederates shelled persistently.
A sudden rise in the river for a time threatened the retreat with
failure and placed a part of the force in danger of destruction or
capture. But in the end Hooker succeeded in extricating his army from
its position. Early on the morning of May 6, the last battalions of the
Army of the Potomac withdrew across the river.
Thus ended in failure the most brilliantly planned attempt that had yet
been made to destroy Confederate resistance, conquer the Confederate
capital and make a mercifully early end of a fratricidal war of
stupendous proportions.
Hooker reported his losses during the campaign at 17,285 men; Lee's
loss was 12,277.
If Lee could have attacked Hooker's fleeing columns when they were
huddled together at the bridge ends on the river, demoralized and
without organization as they were, he might easily have multiplied
the Federal loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners by two or three.
General Schurz once expressed to the present historian his astonishment
that Lee neglected to do this. Perhaps the best answer is given in an
extract from Colonel Dodge's exhaustive history of the conflict. He
writes that Lee "was doubtless profoundly grateful that the Army of
the Potomac should retire across the Rappahannock and leave his troops
to the hard-earned rest they needed so much more than ourselves; but
little thanks are due to Hooker, who was, it seems, on the north side
of the river during these critical moments that the casualties of the
campaign were not doubled by a final assault on the part of Lee while
we lay in this perilous situation.... Providentially the artillery of
the Army of Northern Virginia had expended almost its last round of
ammunition previous to this time."
Thus accident alone saved the rear of Hooker's defeated army from a
disaster and demoralization comparable with that of Manassas, at a
time when, in the urgently expressed opinion of General Sickles, the
conspicuous rout of the Army of the Potomac would necessarily have
meant the abandonment of the struggle by the North. "If," he alleged,
"this army should be destroyed, it would be the last one the country
would raise."
Hooker had lost, by his own incapacity, a decisive opportunity to end
the war with Federal success, and Lee, because of a lack of ammunition,
had lost a still more obvious opportunity to end it by a decisive
triumph of the Confederate arms.