Fighting Joe Hooker Does Everything Except, um, Fight
May 1–6, 1863: The Battle of Chancellorsville
Doug Niles
After the Fredericksburg debacle, President Lincoln wasted little time in removing the clearly overmatched Burnside from command of the Army of the Potomac. On January 26, 1863, that exalted position was awarded to another of the army’s veteran corps commanders, General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Unlike his predecessor, however, Hooker had actively campaigned for the job, scheming with other corps commanders to undermine first McClellan’s, and then Burnside’s, performance.
This subterfuge had reached the point, by mid-January, that Burnside traveled to Washington and demanded that Lincoln remove corps commanders Hooker and Franklin, and a host of other ranking leaders from the army, or else replace Burnside himself. The president opted for the latter choice, and it is doubtful that Burnside was very disappointed—and it is certain that Hooker embraced the promotion with all the delight of a very ambitious and confident commander of men.
In some respects, the promotion was surprising. Hooker had a somewhat unsavory reputation, with one observer referring to his headquarters as “a combination of barroom and brothel.” Still, the seasoned veterans of the army, bitterly resenting the lives wasted at Fredericksburg, reacted to Hooker’s appointment with a modicum of hope. The Army of the Potomac was proving to be a very resilient army indeed, filled with soldiers who seemed determined to prevail in battle not so much because of their leaders as in spite of them. In Hooker, with his bellicose reputation and proven aggressiveness, they felt at least a common desire for success.
The new army commander took immediate steps to improve the lot of his soldiers, and these steps did much to further improve morale. He aggressively cracked down on corrupt quartermasters, men who had been growing rich by skimming profits off supplies that were intended for the army. He saw that rations for the common soldier were improved, opening up warehouses stocked with fresh vegetables and other delicacies that had been essentially lost in the ranks of the vast army bureaucracy. For the first time in months, the troops had fresh, soft bread instead of tough, dried hardtack.
Hooker granted furloughs, offered amnesty to AWOL soldiers—many of whom returned to the ranks—and had distinctive badges designed for each corps. These insignia, apparently trifling though they might be, went a long way toward improving unit cohesion and instilling soldiers’ pride in formations that went beyond their immediate regiment, brigade, or home state. Finally, he reorganized the Union cavalry arm, melding the many small formations attached to the various Yankee corps into an independent force. There were enough troopers to form an entire corps of cavalry, and Hooker, based on the Confederate model, determined to use his riders as a single, powerful entity. This latter step went a long way toward propelling the Union horsemen into an arm of service that would soon match, and eventually surpass, the southern foe.
By contrast, Robert E. Lee’s men were in bad shape as the winter of 1863 warmed into spring. General Longstreet, with two of his veteran divisions, was detached southward to support Rebel positions along the coast of Virginia and North Carolina. It was hoped that he could also garner some fresh provisions from those prosperous regions that had yet to feel the scourge of war. The troops remaining along the Rappahannock numbered only about 60,000 men, or about half the size of Hooker’s army. With supplies running out throughout the region, troops ate wild onions and sassafras buds to avoid scurvy. Many horses starved because of a lack of forage.
But like their opponents across the river, the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia retained a very high morale, with an almost spiritual belief in the infallibility of their legendary army commander and his chief lieutenant, Major General Stonewall Jackson. From his position in unspoiled territory, Longstreet was soon able to send grain and hogs to replenish the army’s commissary, strengthening the men and further improving morale. Still anchored around Fredericksburg, the army occupied a strongly fortified position that now reached some twenty-five miles in length. When Hooker’s army began to stir, Lee was ready to watch, wait, and eventually to counter his opponent’s activities.
Hooker possessed a confidence that was so sublime as to worry President Lincoln, who warned that his army commander was just a trifle too cocky. When Hooker boasted that the question was not “if” he would take Richmond, but “when,” Lincoln pointedly remarked: “the hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until the egg is laid.” Still, Hooker’s enthusiasm was unabated. As he began to put a plan of campaign together he was heard to say, “May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.”
As the plan took shape, Hooker continued to prove himself a master of military events. He had a clear objective: he wanted to maneuver Lee out of his entrenchments and force him to accept battle in the field, where the Union superiority in numbers should prevail. To this end, he divided his army into three large detachments. Some 40,000 men under Major General John Sedgwick would remain in the Union positions opposite Fredericksburg, there to demonstrate against the entrenched Rebels, hopefully to hold them in place.
Hooker also dispatched 10,000 Union cavalry, the largest such force yet to take the field, under the command of Major General George Stoneman. Their assignment was to raid far to the south in an effort to break Lee’s lines of supply and communications with Richmond. While sound in concept, this task proved a little too audacious for the recently expanded cavalry. In the event, this proved to be an early mistake by the commanding general—though he had created a strong and concentrated cavalry arm, in its first action he sent it so far away from the main engagement that Stoneman’s riders were unable to provide the traditional screening and scouting roles performed by the horsemen. Lee, on the other hand, refused to let Jeb Stuart’s cavalry be drawn away by the distraction, and thus he gained much better intelligence about his enemy’s movements. At the same time, the Rebel horsemen were able to screen Confederate operations very effectively and provide accurate intelligence about Federal deployments during the imminent action.
Finally, Hooker himself took command of the bulk of his army, some 70,000 men—a force that, on its own, outnumbered Lee’s entire army. He intended to march them upstream, well beyond the left flank of the Rebel lines, and then cross first the Rappahannock and then the Rapidan River, placing his large force squarely on Lee’s flank, where the southerner’s entrenchments would be useless. He expected that the Army of Northern Virginia, thus outwitted, would pull out of its prepared positions and begin a southward march—whereupon the Army of the Potomac would advance, face its foe in a mobile fight on an open battlefield, and attain the battle of annihilation that had thus far eluded both sides.
This was a complicated plan, but the Army of the Potomac executed the movement with precision and speed. Though Lee’s scouts informed him that much of Hooker’s army was on the move, Hooker moved well beyond Lee’s left flank and was able to cross first the Rappahannock and then the Rapidan before the Rebels could react. He moved into a region known locally as the Wilderness, a relatively tangled forest of new-growth trees, dense underbrush, and frequent swamps. Only two known roads traversed the Wilderness, and Hooker planned to use both of them to converge his forces at a remote crossroads known as the Chancellor Plantation.
By the end of April, Hooker’s plan was very near to a dramatic payoff. The four corps under his direct command were advancing through the Wilderness toward Chancellorsville, though passage through the dense woods was a little more difficult than anyone on the Union side had expected. Still, all units were able to move into their assigned positions, and in his wing alone Hooker possessed more men than in the entire army arrayed against him.
Back at Fredericksburg, Lee and Jackson kept a wary eye on Sedgwick’s 40,000 men, who sidled downriver on their bank, and made as if to cross and attack the Confederate right. However, neither of these veteran Rebel leaders was fooled, and together they concluded that they were watching a feint. Stuart’s cavalry, meanwhile, had brought them news of the Federal presence in the Wilderness. Lee, ever the gambler, decided to violate one of the basic tenets of warfare by dividing his force in the face of a larger enemy army. It was a gamble that would pay off, in spades.
He left Major General Jubal Early with 10,000 men at Fredericksburg, well entrenched on Marye’s Heights, with orders to keep an eye on Sedgwick. With the rest of his men, some 43,000, he marched swiftly westward, reaching the edge of the Wilderness on April 30. The Rebels plunged into the woods and, on May 1, met the advance elements of Hooker’s force, General George Sykes’s division of Meade’s corps.
The resulting clash became a sharp little firefight, with Union General Darius Couch bringing up reinforcements at Hooker’s command. The Rebels on the front seemed to be growing in strength, but so were the Yankees. It seemed to Couch, Meade, and most of the rest of Hooker’s command group that things were developing according to plan. After all, if each side kept pouring men into the fight, lengthening the front, the simple law of arithmetic meant that the Federals would soon outstretch their foe and the victory would be won.
But they had not taken into consideration the army commander. Now, as the battle was beginning, Fighting Joe Hooker seemed to be getting very cold feet indeed. After another hour or so of the growing skirmish, he abruptly ordered Couch and the rest of his advance units to fall back to Chancellorsville, ceding the bit of contested high ground to the Rebels. Couch and Meade both protested vigorously, but Hooker’s mind was made up—the men were to retreat, now!
“If he thinks he can’t hold the top of the hill, how does he expect to hold the bottom of it?” Couch grumbled as he glumly obeyed orders, bringing his men as a rear guard back to Chancellorsville. That night Hooker tried to reassure his subordinate, boasting that he had Lee right where he wanted him. The reassurance didn’t work, and later Couch would say, “I retired from [Hooker’s] presence with the belief that my commanding general was a whipped man.”
For their part, Lee and Jackson let the Yankees retreat unmolested, and paused to consider a plan of action. Thanks to a topographical engineer and some help from locals, Jackson learned of some narrow back roads that theoretically would allow him to move a force across the face of Hooker’s army and come upon the Yankees from the west—that is, from the rear of Hooker’s eastward-facing army. Lee approved the plan, and Jackson put it into motion as quickly as possible on May 2. This meant that, once again, the Army of Northern Virginia would divide itself in the face of a stronger foe, as Lee retained about 16,000 men to face Hooker while Jackson took some 25,000 for the flanking maneuver.
But, as usual, Robert E. Lee had taken accurate measure of his foe. Even as his corps commanders chafed at the inaction, Hooker seemed like a changed man, now determined to simply wait and see what developed. When III Corps commander Daniel Sickles located a relatively open bit of high ground in his front, Hooker allowed him to advance to the place, called Hazel Grove, with some of his corps. But for the rest, the army would stay in place.
On the right (westernmost) flank of Hooker’s force was posted General Oliver Howard’s XI Corps, composed mostly of German immigrants—commonly called Dutchmen in the vernacular of the time. These men had received little respect and affection from the rest of the army, and perhaps this prejudice was reflected in their being posted at what was assumed to be the far rear. Howard had recently replaced the previous commander, Franz Sigel, a fellow Dutchman. Howard had little affection for his men, and they reciprocated.
On May 2, Sickles reported large columns of Rebels moving past his position. He and Hooker assumed that this indicated that Lee was retreating, though Hooker did send one message to Howard warning him to watch his flank. There is no record that Howard passed this warning on to his men. Indeed, as more and more signs of activity began to stir in the woods to the west of XI Corps, many junior officers went to Howard’s headquarters to warn of enemy activity. Howard and his non-German staff officers dismissed these men as worrywarts, even implying cowardice in some cases. The general would not authorize a change in his corps’ facing, or anything more than a couple of lonely artillery pieces swiveled to face west.
By 5:30 in the afternoon, Jackson had his men in position, and they came swarming out of the woods like a hurricane. Though some individual units fought gallantly, Howard’s corps was soon shattered, survivors streaming back to the Chancellorsville plantation in confusion and dismay. It was only the late hour that saved Hooker’s force from complete disaster, as darkness finally broke the impetus of the attack and gave the weary Yankees a chance to catch their breath and reorient their lines.
Disaster did come in the darkness, but in a capricious act of cruel fate it struck the Rebels very sharply indeed. Stonewall Jackson, determined to keep the offensive moving, rode forward in the twilight to try to spur his men on to greater efforts. As he was returning with his staff to the Confederate lines, a group of pickets mistook his mounted party for Yankee cavalry and unleashed a volley of musketry. Stonewall was badly wounded by several shots that shattered his arm. He fell from the saddle and was carried to the rear, wrapped in blankets. The arm was amputated later that night. Though Jackson would show signs of recovery in the immediate aftermath of the battle, the wounded general would fall victim to pneumonia and die on May 10.
On May 3, Jeb Stuart took command of Jackson’s corps and resumed the attack. By then Hooker’s men had established a fairly strong defensive perimeter and, in fact, still possessed superiority in numbers that would have allowed the Federals to assume the attack in any direction that they chose. But Fighting Joe seemed to be all fought out. Much to Sickles’s disgust, Hooker ordered him to fall back from his “exposed” position at Hazel Grove. The Rebels immediately claimed the spot, which was about the only good artillery ground in all the Wilderness, and used it to relentlessly hammer the Yankees for the rest of the battle. One of those cannonballs struck a pillar of the Chancellor mansion while Hooker was leaning against it, the resulting concussion knocking him out for several minutes. Fortunately for the Rebels, he recovered soon enough to prevent any of his subordinates from taking decisive action.
In the meantime, Sedgwick was moving aggressively at Fredericksburg, and this time the Yankees drove the Rebels from their trenches on Marye’s Heights. Early, outnumbered by four to one, was pushed westward, and once more the Army of the Potomac had a chance to close on a portion of the enemy force. But again Lee acted quickly, virtually abandoning his position before the immobile Hooker and sending reinforcements eastward. On May 4 they clashed with Sedgwick’s corps at Salem Church, sending the Yankees reeling backward.
Over the next two days, the Army of the Potomac withdrew carefully back across the Rappahannock until, by the end of May 6, that deep river once again divided the two armies. “Fighting Joe” Hooker’s ambitious plan had come to naught, not for lack of a good plan but for a simple lack of fight.