[1.0] The Battle Of Chancellorsville, May 1863

* The Union Army of the Potomac had, from its origin, suffered from inadequate leadership, with American President Abraham Lincoln casting about for a general who could lead it to victory. In early 1863 he selected, with some misgivings, Major General Joseph Hooker as its commander. Hooker proved energetic in that role, bringing the Army of the Potomac up to fighting tone. At the beginning of May 1862, he confidently led his army south to take on Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia -- only to lose his nerve on contact with the rebels, the result being a Union defeat.

[1.1] JOE HOOKER IN COMMAND

* Following the outbreak of fighting between the US government and the break-away Confederate States of America in April 1861, the Confederacy relocated its capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. That meant a close proximity to the Union capital in Washington DC, with the Federal war in the East focused on the capture of Richmond.

The first attempt to take Richmond led to a clash on 21 July 1861 at Manassas in northern Virginia. The Union force was poorly organized, and undisciplined; on contact with Confederate forces, the Union drive fell apart. Union President Abraham Lincoln then assigned Major General George Brinton McClellan to get Union Army forces in the region in fighting shape, preparatory to moving once more against Richmond.

McClellan proved an able organizer and disciplinarian, with his force acquiring the name of the "Army of the Potomac". McClellan was slow to take action -- but under prodding by President Lincoln, in the spring of 1862, his Army of the Potomac conducted a plodding campaign to capture Richmond, moving up the James River Peninsula from the southeast. In late June, the offensive came to a halt when Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia conducted a counter-offensive against McClellan's forces.

The fighting during the "Seven Days' Battles" was brutal and confused, with the Confederate force suffering as badly as the Union force; had McClellan pushed on regardless, he would have defeated the rebels and captured Richmond. In reality, all the fight had been knocked out of him. Lee understood that, to begin a drive north to threaten Washington DC and other northern cities. That led to a second fight on the Manassas battlefield at the end of August 1862, which ended in another Union defeat.

McClellan's standing with President Lincoln was poor, but in the aftermath of the defeat at Manassas, he was assigned to lead Union forces to confront and defeat Lee. That led to an extremely violent battle at Sharpsburg, Maryland, on 17 September 1862; the Army of Northern Virginia was defeated, and Lee was forced to give up his campaign in the North. However, McClellan once again proved unaggressive, with the Confederates able to withdraw effectively unmolested.

* Failing to demonstrate much initiative after the battle of Sharpsburg, McClellan was relieved of command on 5 November 1862, and was effectively out of the war. He was replaced in command of the Army of the Potomac by Major General Ambrose Burnside -- a big, bluff, honest, and likeable man, who didn't think he was up to the job. He tried to refuse the appointment, but was told it was an order.

Burnside proved his own doubts correct, marching his troops to a disaster at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in which he threw them at impregnable Confederate defenses. The result was a ghastly slaughter of Union men, with little injury to rebel forces. Morale in the Army of the Potomac went to rock bottom, with Burnside's subordinate officers loud in complaints against their commander. Many were loyal to McClellan, and had never come to terms with his dismissal.

The loudest among the complainers was Major General Joseph Hooker -- a handsome, excessively ambitious man with something of a dissolute reputation. Hooker told anyone who wanted to listen that Burnside was an incompetent, that the President and his men were imbeciles, concluding that "nothing would go right until they had a dictator, and the sooner the better." Of course, Burnside learned of the slurs against him, and decided to confront the President, demanding that the insubordinate senior officers in his command be sacked, saying he would resign unless it was done.

On 25 January 1863, the War Department announced that General Burnside had resigned from his position on his own request, and that General Hooker was now in command of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln issued the order without consulting any of his cabinet beforehand. The President did not accept Burnside's resignation; he thought highly of the genial and honest Burnside, and eventually found a rear-area command for him. Burnside certainly seemed glad to be relieved of a burden that he hadn't wanted in the first place, and told the President: "If Hooker can gain a victory, neither you nor he will be a happier man than I shall be."

Given the rash comments Hooker had made, the fact that he had been given the top command of the Army of the Potomac was surprising, but there were valid reasons for the selection. The first was that he was aggressive; in fact, he was known as "Fighting Joe" Hooker, though that was partly due to a typographical error. During the battles on the James River Peninsula the previous spring, a reporter had filed a story with his paper that contained a descriptive tag that read "Fighting -- Joe Hooker" -- that had been accidentally printed as "Fighting Joe Hooker". He claimed to hate the nickname, since he felt it made him seem hot-headed and rash, and yet he was fearless and seemed to have a strong desire to come to grips with the enemy.

The second qualification was that Hooker wasn't part of the clique of officers who idolized McClellan; Hooker was really for no one but Joe Hooker. In any case, with no other worthwhile candidates available, he seemed to be the only man around who might be able to do the job, and so he was given it, in effect being told: You claimed you could do a better job, now you get to prove it.

His loud and foolish remarks had certainly not gone unnoticed at the top, and the next day, 26 January, the President penned a remarkable letter to the new commander of the Army of the Potomac:

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If Hooker was startled by this message, he hid it artfully. He kept the letter in his pocket and read it to a reporter, concluding: "He talks to me like a father. I shall not answer this letter until I have won him a great victory."

* Burnside's inept leadership of the Army of the Potomac had brought it to a painful state of disorder. As one item of evidence, by the end of January 1863, the rolls indicated over 85,000 men absent without leave. Not all these men were actually deserters as such. Partly the problem was that men who were injured or ill -- and there were many sick men in the army's camp at Falmouth, Virginia -- could be sent back to hospitals in their home state. They rarely returned. Local doctors at such hospitals could grant medical discharges on any pretext they liked, and the army had no control over the matter. Once a soldier was admitted, the army couldn't touch him, and the hospitals had little interest in rounding up soldiers who wandered off.

There were still plenty of actual deserters, driven off by the futile battles and the misery of the camps. The army was too inept to take care of its people, and so not surprisingly also expended little effort to catch runaways. There was a meager reward of $5 for capturing a deserter, and the paperwork involved made it more trouble than it was worth. With misery so widespread, the discouraged soldiers of the Army of the Potomac were not impressed by Joe Hooker at first. To them, he was just another humbug general; but Hooker quickly demonstrated an attention to detail that had been beyond the abilities of Ambrose Burnside.

The first problems to attend to were disease and desertion. Hooker dealt with the disease problem by establishing and enforcing sanitation measures in camp, and by ensuring that the men were properly fed, with issues of onions, potatoes, and fresh-baked bread. The fresh bread proved particularly popular. One soldier called Hooker a "veritable Santa Claus", and the sick list fell in half. The men were less happy about the crackdown on liquor in the camps: enlisted men got booze only when their superiors thought they deserved it.

Hooker dealt with the desertion problem by instituting "constant and severe" programs of drill to keep the men occupied and trained, while their officers were schooled at night to improve their skills; and by granting regular furloughs. Congress also helped by finally appropriating the money to give the men the back pay they had been owed for months. Security measures, such as tighter patrols and a pass system, were implemented to catch runaways, and it also became possible to execute deserters without having the President review the sentence in every case. Incoming parcels for the soldiers were checked to ensure they did not contain civilian clothing.

Hooker also made changes and improvements in the military organization of the Army of the Potomac, dividing the army into seven corps, with the corps commanders reporting directly to him. Following up Burnside's attempts to build a more effective cavalry organization, Hooker set up an independent cavalry corps under Major General George Stoneman, in hopes that Union cavalry would then be able to engage in the long-range raids that the Confederates had proven so skilled at.

Under Burnside, the military intelligence apparatus of the Army of the Potomac had all but fallen apart. That wasn't entirely a bad thing: McClellan's intelligence service had been prone to give him greatly exaggerated estimates of Confederate strength, which he took as complete truth. Nonetheless, good intelligence about Confederate capabilities and intentions was absolutely essential. Joe Hooker set up a Bureau of Military Intelligence to obtain intelligence and provide reports, basing them on interrogations of deserters and prisoners, cavalry patrols, and a new corps of scouts.

With such prompt and effective reforms, the appreciation of the rank and file for Joe Hooker grew by leaps and bounds. There were still nagging doubts about Hooker among the officer corps, particularly among those of "proper" backgrounds, one of them describing headquarters under Hooker as a "combination barroom and brothel". This judgement may have been exaggerated, prudery being more the rule then than it is today. In fact, a friend of Hooker's said that despite the general's reputation as a hard drinker, he stopped drinking when he was put in the top command.

The men he brought into his inner circle didn't win him any friends among the proper, either. His friend Brigadier General Dan Butterfield was just as fond of the good life as Hooker, and the fact that Butterfield came out of the militia, having been a New York businessman before the war, did not recommend him to regular-army officers -- though Butterfield would make his mark on military history by composing the lights-out bugle call later known as "Taps".

Butterfield was colorless in comparison to Hooker's associate Major General Dan Sickles, a congressman-turned-general with political roots in New York City's corrupt Tammany Hall organization. Sickles had his eye on the presidency before the war, but his political career had taken a nosedive when he found out that a friend of his, Philip Barton Key, son of Francis Scott Key, composer of the national anthem, had been having an affair with his wife. Sickles shot and killed Key on the streets of Washington.

His trial was a public circus. Sickles was acquitted on a plea of temporary insanity, one of the first times that defense was used -- though in those days, it was unlikely in any case that Sickles would have been convicted of murder in killing a man who had been sleeping with his wife, with a jury willing to accept any handy pretext for saying "not guilty".

Killing Key in itself did not lead to Sickles' political problems. What discredited him was that he forgave his wife and took her back. To proper citizens, this was an appalling act of weakness, amounting to approval of her misdeeds, and he was ostracized. When war came along, he saw in it an opportunity to retrieve his fortunes in military glory, and went back to New York to raise volunteer regiments. Sickles had the looks of a melodrama villain and cared little what anyone thought of what he did. Joe Hooker could not have deliberately chosen a friend more calculated to inspire distrust by association.

* While Joe Hooker got the Army of the Potomac back into shape for offensive operations, military confrontations with the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia remained limited to cavalry raids. On 24 February 1863, Robert E. Lee's nephew Fitzhugh Lee led 400 cavalrymen north of the Rappahannock River into Yankee-occupied Virginia to investigate rumors that Hooker was getting ready to move. The raid was intended merely to obtain information and did so, showing that the rumors of an imminent Federal offensive were false. However, Fitzhugh Lee also obtained the satisfaction of pouncing on the US 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry just outside of Falmouth and routing them, taking 150 prisoners.

The commander of the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry was William W. Averell, a classmate of Fitzhugh Lee's who was now a division commander under General Stoneman. Averell took after the rebels with his cavalry division and two infantry divisions in support, but the Confederates escaped easily. Fitzhugh Lee left a note for Averell, which began: "I wish you would put up your sword, leave my state, and go home." -- and ended: "If you won't go home, return my visit and bring me a sack of coffee."

In an even more daring raid a week later, Captain John S. Mosby -- a dashing bantamweight cavalryman who operated behind Union lines as an irregular -- descended on Fairfax, Virginia, on the night of 8 March and grabbed a Union brigadier general from his bed. Mosby would be a pain to the Federals for a long time to come, appearing out of nowhere, striking suddenly, and then disappearing into the night.

Union cavalrymen were tired of being kicked around, and Averell decided to accept Fitzhugh Lee's challenge. On 18 March, he and 3,000 troopers splashed across Kelly's Ford to move south. Fitzhugh Lee only had 1,000 men to oppose him, but the rebel pickets across the river put up a good fight, instilling some caution in Averell. He left behind 1,000 men as a rear guard, reducing his odds against the rebel cavalry.

Averell took his men only a mile south of the river. He knew Fitzhugh Lee well enough to know that the rebels would come to him, and put his men into position behind a stone wall to wait. The Confederates showed up as expected, charged the Union men, and were badly bloodied; then Averell's 1st Brigade, under Colonel Alfred Duffie, countercharged and drove the rebels back. Averell moved up a short distance and stood off another Confederate charge, with similar unpleasant results for the rebels. The fighting then settled down into a long-range exchange of shots that lasted into the afternoon. Finally, on finding out from rebel prisoners that Confederate reinforcements had arrived, Averell decided to withdraw, leaving behind a sack of coffee and a note: "Dear Fitz: Here's your coffee. Here's your visit. How do you like it? Averell."

It had been a Federal victory of sorts, but so not much of one. The Yankees had thrown Fitzhugh Lee's men into disorder twice, but Averell had lacked the nerve to follow it up. Hooker lit into Averell, criticizing him for a failure of nerve due of "imaginary apprehensions" -- a remark that would come back to haunt Hooker later. If the Federal cavalry had failed to exploit their advantage, the Confederates were not celebrating. Fitzhugh Lee had lost 133 men to Averell's 78; in addition, Confederate cavalry had long ridden circles around their Union counterparts, and those days were clearly drawing to a close.

[1.2] HOOKER ENTERS THE WILDERNESS

* On 3 April 1863, President Lincoln decided to pay the Army of the Potomac a visit at Falmouth and see how things were going. He spent several days in inspections and visits, culminating in a splendid and impressive parade-ground review on 8 April.

The troops were in excellent shape. Their morale appeared high, their appearance and performance were crisp and professional. It was clear that Hooker's reforms had done wonders. Hooker himself, however, did not inspire confidence in Lincoln. The general's bluster had been quoted in the press -- "God help the rebels!" -- and in person, Hooker made comments like "when I get to Richmond". When the President gently suggested that "if" would be more prudent than "when", Hooker insisted that he had no doubts that he would take Richmond. The President had heard this sort of windiness from other generals, and had learned it was often followed by disaster. Still, the President had no choice but to trust to the judgement of the commanding general he had selected for the job, though he did offer one bit of advice: "In your next fight, put in all your men."

Lincoln then steamed back upriver to Washington, having found the review something of a vacation from his worries. Back in the White House, the worries remained, particularly since Hooker was clearly preparing to move out and was being as quiet as possible about his plans.

Taking on Lee was not a simple prospect. Confederate combat engineers had built 25 continuous miles (40 kilometers) of some of the most sophisticated and formidable field fortifications the world had ever seen to block any move by the Army of the Potomac. Hooker would have to bypass those fortifications or face another Fredericksburg.

His initial plan was to send General Stoneman's cavalry corps, 10,000 troopers strong, upstream to then curve behind Lee's army and cut Confederate lines of communications and supply. Hooker believed, optimistically, that the raid would panic the rebels and create an opportunity for a push through their lines. He sent Dan Butterfield to Washington to brief the President on the plan. General Butterfield spoke to Lincoln alone to ensure that Hooker's plans were exposed to as little interference as possible.

Stoneman set out with his men on the morning of 13 April. A brigade under the enterprising Unionist Mississippian, Colonel Benjamin "Grimes" Davis, was sent ahead to cross the Rappahannock some 30 miles (48 kilometers) upstream from Fredericksburg, and then loop back to secure a crossing for the main force. Davis succeeded in securing a crossing, but the main force didn't arrive -- and then the rain began to fall, causing the river to rise. Davis was forced to retreat back over the river, losing men and horses in the surging waters.

The rain brought the whole offensive to a halt. Stoneman and his men set up camp north of the river to wait for the weather to dry out. Hooker remained optimistic in his reports to the President, but Lincoln was not fooled. Assessing the lack of progress in Stoneman's reported movements, he wrote Hooker on 15 April: "I greatly fear it is another failure already."

* The weather did not clear up until 25 April. By then, Hooker had decided it was time to move out in strength, with the bulk of the Army of the Potomac. He wanted to and expected to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia in one powerful blow. Stoneman's troopers would continue their movement into Lee's rear areas, while the infantry divisions moved out rapidly and crossed the Rappahannock at several places.

Three corps under Major Generals Henry Slocum, Oliver Howard, and George Meade would move by unobserved back-country roads to cross the Rappahannock at Kelly's Ford, 20 miles (32 kilometers) upstream from Fredericksburg, and split up to cross the Rapidan at Genhenna's Ford and Ely's Ford. The separated forces would then sweep southwest into a region of scrub forest and undergrowth known as the Wilderness, and join up again at a crossroads in that area near a large red-brick mansion, known as Chancellor House. The soldiers would move quickly, carrying their ammunition and food on their backs, or the backs of mules; wagons would slow the advance down. The crossroad junction in the Wilderness was dignified with the name "Chancellorsville". Once this sweeping movement had forced the Confederates out of their defenses, the corps of Major General Darius Couch would join the drive by crossing at US Ford, much closer to Fredericksburg.

In the meantime, a few divisions would be left at Falmouth to deceive the rebels, while the corps of Major Generals John Reynolds, John Sedgwick, and Dan Sickles would move across the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, as if to re-enact Burnside's assault of the past December. This was not entirely a feint. Hooker told Sedgwick, who had been put in charge of the Fredericksburg movement, that if Lee weakened his positions above the town, he was to press an attack "at all hazards".

The upstream movement began on 27 April 1863 and made good progress. By the afternoon of 30 April the three corps of Meade, Slocum, and Howard had assembled in the clearing around Chancellor House.

Couch was preparing to lead his corps across US Ford. The Confederates, fearing that they would be surrounded, had fled the defenses there, as Hooker had planned. Sickles had been called with his corps from Fredericksburg to add their weight to the attack. Although Meade wasn't an exciteable man, he had to cry out: "Hurrah for Old Joe! We're on Lee's flank, and he doesn't know it!"

Hooker himself was very pleased by the progress of his movements, and felt he could afford to wait to gather his forces before proceeding further. There was a risk in this. The tangled Wilderness provided few opportunities for bringing the bulk of the Army of the Potomac to bear on the Confederates, but Hooker felt that he had attained complete surprise over Lee, and the success of Union arms was a forgone conclusion.

Lee had indeed been confused by Hooker's rapid movements and had reason to be concerned. The Army of Northern Virginia had suffered severely through the winter, and Lee was outnumbered two to one. However, Lee was hard to intimidate, and by the evening of 29 April his scouts and other intelligence had given him a clear picture of the movement of Hooker's army into Chancellorsville. Rebel divisions were immediately put on the move to counter the Federal advance.

* On hearing reports of the Army of the Potomac's advance towards Chancellorsville, on the night of 29 April General Lee sent Major General Richard Anderson's division to scout and cover major roads. Anderson confirmed the presence of Yankees in force. Anderson did not want to confront them in the tangled Wilderness, and so he set up defenses in open country to the east. There were two roads that went east from Chancellorsville, one named the "Turnpike" in the north, and the second named the "Plank Road" in the south. The Plank Road received its name from the fact that it had a rough pavement of wooden planks. Anderson's men set themselves up to block an advance along either of these routes.

On the morning of 30 April, Lee was still uncertain of Federal intentions. Lieutenant General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, wanted to attack John Sedgwick's forces, now across the Rappahannock in Fredericksburg, but Lee remained wary of Federal artillery massed across the river. Sedgwick showed no signs of aggressiveness, and so in the afternoon Lee decided correctly that the real threat was from Chancellorsville. He ordered all of Jackson's corps, except for a division under Major General Jubal Early, to march in the morning to join Anderson. Early was to remain in Fredericksburg to keep an eye on Sedgwick.

Jackson arrived on the line at about 08:00 AM on Friday, 1 May, to find Anderson's men still digging in. Jackson was a very daring and aggressive fighter, and defense was not his way of doing things; he told the troops to cease their work and prepare to attack. From Jackson's point of view, he wasn't outnumbered: he instead had, as the modern phrase has it, a "target-rich environment". Hooker's divisions were even at that moment moving eastward. George Meade's V Corps was moving along a trail known as the River Road that ran between the Rappahannock and the Turnpike, Major Generals George Sykes and Winfield Scott Hancock were moving their divisions down the Turnpike, and Slocum's XII Corps and Howard's XI Corps were advancing down the Plank Road.

The Federals quickly made contact with rebel soldiers of Major General Lafayette McLaws' division, who began to attack Sykes' division on its flanks. Other Union divisions moved up in support and took strong positions on open country. Then, to the shock of the corps and division commanders, orders came down from Joe Hooker: Abandon the advance and return to Chancellorsville. Meade was outraged: "My God! If we can't hold the top of a hill, we certainly cannot hold the bottom of it!"

Darius Couch of II Corps was similarly disturbed. Couch was a cool, slight fellow who by all evidence knew no fear. During the fighting that morning, he had helped out by suggesting to his staff: "Let us draw their fire." -- and led them out to be visible targets for the rebels. None of them were hurt, except for highly frayed nerves. Couch went to Hooker to find out what had possessed his commander to give up the initiative so easily. Hooker gave Couch bland assurances: "It's all right, Couch. I have got Lee just where I want him; he must fight me on my own ground." Couch was anything but reassured, since the tangled thickets of the Wilderness were hardly the place to make good use of the superior numbers of the Army of the Potomac. He left Hooker's tent believing his commander was a "whipped man".

Hooker apparently had been given caution by intelligence reports that indicated Lee had received reinforcements that were lurking someplace in the Federal rear. The reports were false, but Hooker's fears were reinforced by Lee's aggressive actions, which hardly seemed to be the kind of reaction to be expected from someone who was badly outnumbered. Whatever his motivations, Hooker sent orders to his corps commanders and instructed them to prepare a defense. The order ended: "The major general commanding trusts that a suspension in the attack today will embolden the enemy to attack him."

* If Hooker's behavior seemed odd to Robert E. Lee, Lee didn't dwell on it for long. If Hooker wanted to be attacked, the Army of Northern Virginia would be happy to oblige him.

There was the question of the best way to do so. Reconnaissance indicated that the Wilderness was too dense to allow an attack on the Federal lines from the east and that Federal positions in the center were too strong for a direct assault, but it appeared that a flank attack might be possible from the west.

Jackson's skilled topographical engineer, Major Jedediah Hotchkiss, had drawn up a map for a route of attack. Confederate forces could skirt unobserved around the Wilderness over a road known as the "Brock Road", and then drive directly into the Federal positions via the "Orange Plank Road". On studying the map, Lee asked Stonewall Jackson: "General Jackson, what do you propose to do?"

"Go around here," he replied in his terse way, indicating the route of attack given by the map.

Lee asked: "What do you propose to make this movement with?"

Jackson said: "With my whole corps." There was a long pause as Lee considered the notion; he then asked what troops would be left behind, and Jackson said: "The divisions of Anderson and McLaws."

Lee replied: "Well, go on." This plan meant that 70,000 men of the Army of the Potomac would be facing a mere 14,000 rebels in their front, while 26,000 other Confederates spent a day on the march. It was a staggering gamble, provoked by the fact that, given the odds, the long shot was the only real choice.

[1.3] CHANCELLORSVILLE, 2 MAY

* By early morning of Saturday, 2 May 1863, Jackson's men were on the move around Hooker's army. The Federals were deployed in an arc in the middle of the Wilderness, with Meade's V Corps on the east, near the Rappahannock; the corps of Couch, Slocum, and Sickles in the center, around Chancellorsville; and Howard's XI Corps around the Wilderness Chapel, about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) to the west.

Rebel cavalry under Major General James Ewell Brown ("Jeb") Stuart had been doing a good job of keeping Federal scouts in their place for the last few days, and in fact most of the Union cavalry was involved in Stoneman's raid, ironically leaving Hooker badly outnumbered in horsemen. However, such a large movement of rebels could not be easily concealed. It was quickly spotted, with runners sent to headquarters to notify Hooker.

Hooker had learned that some of his apprehensions of the previous day were groundless, having received information that Lee couldn't have more than 50,000 men and that Lee didn't have any major reinforcements at hand. Lee had to be retreating, but Hooker still waffled, saying to himself: "Retreat without a fight? That is not Lee. If not retreat, then what is it?"

He came to the correct conclusion: "Lee is trying to flank me." Hooker sent a message to Howard, instructing him to prepare for a possible flank attack from the west. At 11:00 AM Howard replied that he was taking appropriate measures. However, Howard did not say that all he had done was face two regiments and his reserve artillery to the west.

Meanwhile, Dan Sickles had been insistently requesting permission to attack the Confederates moving across his front. Hooker finally gave him guarded authorization to "advance cautiously" and "harass the movement as much as possible." Sickles, though he had no formal military training, possessed an excess of aggressiveness and interpreted the orders liberally, attacking the rear of Jackson's column with two full divisions at an old ironworks named Catherine Furnace, in the center of the Union line.

The assault was led by the 1st and 2nd Sharpshooter Regiments under Colonel Hiram Berdan. The Sharpshooter Brigade was an elite unit: all its men were dead shots, they had been given intensive physical training, and they wore distinctive green uniforms instead of normal Union blue. The Sharpshooters managed to capture several hundred Georgians, until the Confederate rear guard rallied and threw back the attack. Jackson continued his march without further interference.

At this point, Hooker then unaccountably decided that the rebels were retreating after all. Complacency propagated down the chain of command. Increasingly frantic reports by regimental officers in Howard's command of rebels massing to the west were ignored. After all, Howard had informed headquarters that he was taking necessary precautions, so what was the fuss about? With the Confederates apparently running away, Hooker passed orders back to Sedgwick for him to attack with his 30,000 men and drive the enemy out of Fredericksburg.

* Part of the complacency was also due to the low esteem given Howard's XI Corps by the rest of the Army of the Potomac. Roughly half of the regiments in XI Corps were made up of German immigrants, who were regarded with a certain amount of bigotry as "Dutchmen", or even "Hessians" -- the despised German mercenaries hired by the British during the American Revolution. More to the point, the Germans had a bad military reputation, having acquired little distinction in combat to that time.

They also had a poor relationship with their commander, Oliver Howard. Howard was a fighting soldier -- he had lost an arm in action during the battles on the Peninsula the year before -- but he was pious to the point of obnoxious; his colleague, Major General Abner Doubleday, recollected with annoyance that when they were at West Point together, on meeting a pretty young lady Howard could only ask her if she had reflected on the goodness of God recently. Howard had acquired the sarcastic nickname of the "Christian Soldier". Many of the German soldiers had been malcontents in the old country who had fled to the New World to escape traditions they found oppressive, and having a leader who attempted to preach to them and pass out religious tracts did not inspire them. To his credit, Howard did learn the errors of his ways quickly, but by then the damage had been done.

In any case, the alarms were ignored. There was a certain logical disconnect in Hooker's thinking: he believed Howard's XI Corps could be relied on to defend the Army of the Potomac against a flank attack, while simultaneously refusing to believe anything Howard's officers said about what was going on in front of them. Unfortunately, Joe Hooker had been demonstrating a knack for logical disconnects since entering the Wilderness. When a brigade commander named Colonel Leopold von Gilsa personally took a message to Howard from one of the commanders in charge of a regiment on the west flank that read: "A large body of the enemy is massing on my front. For God's sake make disposition to receive him!" -- Howard angrily replied that the woods in that area were too thick to permit an attack.

One of Howard's artillery officers was almost captured by Jackson's men while on reconnaissance, but when he went to Hooker's headquarters his report was dismissed as a fairy tale. The officer went to XI Corps headquarters, where he was told that Lee was retreating.

In fact, Jackson had reached the Orange Plank Road, the jumping-off point for his planned attack, at 2:00 PM. However, Jackson had a clear view of the Federal positions in front of him -- and though the Yankees were clearly unaware of any danger, they were wise enough to have dug effective defenses. Jackson would have to move farther north, to the Turnpike, to make a flanking attack. That took another two hours. Jackson assembled his men into three lines, stretching about a mile to either side of the Turnpike. Brigadier General Robert Rodes' division was in the first line; Brigadier General Raleigh Colston's was in the next; and A.P. Hill's division was in the rear. Jackson intended to drive down the Turnpike and eventually link up with his right with Lee's forces near Catherine Furnace, while moving artillery and infantry northward to block Hooker's lines of retreat.

A little after 5:00 PM, Jackson asked Rodes: "Are you ready?" Rodes said: "Yes." Jackson replied: "You can go forward, then." The rebels moved out in a wave. The first indication the Union men had of trouble was a rush of deer and rabbits coming out of the thick undergrowth. The Yankees thought this amusing, failing to consider what it was the animals were running from -- until the first lines of screaming Confederates appeared, their clothes torn up by charging through the brambles.

Jackson's men hit the Federals hard, overrunning Federal pickets and colliding with four of Howard's regiments on the western flank. Two of these regiments, the 153rd Pennsylvania and 54th New York, managed to get off a few volleys before falling back. The 41st and 45th New York, caught in the flank, broke and ran without putting up a fight.

Just behind them was the 75th Ohio. The regiment's commander, Colonel Robert Reiley, had realized what Jackson was up to a half-hour before the attack came and had organized his men for defense. They let the stampeded regiments pour through their ranks, then let the rebels have it when they were only 30 paces away. It was a brave fight, but Jackson's men flowed around the 75th Ohio, and the Federals finally had to flee, the regiment disintegrating as a fighting force.

Within an hour, Jackson's soldiers were tearing through the entire western flank of the Army of the Potomac. When Howard went up the line to investigate, he ran into the flood of men running back to the rear. An aide suggested that he fire on the fleeing men to stop them, but he refused, instead grabbing a US flag under the stump of his right arm, and, waving a pistol with his good arm, shouting out: "Halt! Halt! I'm ruined! I'm ruined!" He became so hysterical that some of the soldiers stopped simply to watch him in amazement. Nonetheless, although Howard's men did manage to put up some resistance, they were overwhelmed.

* Dan Sickles of III Corps was still unaware of the danger to his flank. When the Confederate attack was confirmed, however, he dispatched the 8th Pennsylvania cavalry regiment to help. The cavalrymen did not really understand the situation and ran straight into Rodes' men, much to the surprise of both sides. The Pennsylvanians charged, slashing away with sabres, but were then caught in a terrible volley that took down over 30 of their number. The charge was suicidal, but it did buy Union troops a little time to form another line that began to slow Jackson's advance. It would also lead the Confederates to make a terrible blunder later.

Hooker, who was sitting on the porch of Chancellor House, was similarly unaware of the disaster. Oddly, none of the ruckus could be heard there. The first sign of trouble was the appearance of panicked Union soldiers pouring down the Plank Road. Hooker and his officers jumped onto their horses and rode into the mob, trying to rally them. It was futile, and so Hooker extricated himself from the mob and then found the commander of his old III Corps division, his good friend Major General Hiram Berry. Hooker shouted at Berry: "General, throw your men into the breach -- receive the enemy on your bayonets!"

Berry's division formed up a line running south of the Plank Road just to the west of Chancellorsville, and Hooker threw in artillery and such divisions as he could find to bolster the line. One of Couch's brigades was assigned to halt the fleeing XI Corps men and get them back to the fighting.

Faced with stiffening resistance and falling darkness, the rebel attack began to falter. Stonewall Jackson had been among his men through the entire attack. When the fighting slowed down, he went forward to organize a night attack and get the battle rolling again.

There was a bright full moon, and so continuing the fight seemed perfectly practical. Jackson and his staff rode around the battlefield, determining the best way to renew the assault -- but they ran into jumpy Confederate troops, who confused them with Union cavalry and opened fire. Jackson was hit three times; he was carried to the rear on a litter, and his arm was amputated.

Command had passed to Major General Ambrose Powell "A.P." Hill when Jackson was hit, but only minutes after that a Yankee shell blast knocked Hill down, temporarily paralyzing his legs. Command then passed in turn to Rodes. However, Rodes was not well known by the rank and file in Jackson's corps, and so Hill decided to switch command to Jeb Stuart. Rodes raised no objection, later writing: "I was satisfied the good of the service demanded it." Stuart had no clear idea of what Jackson had been planning, he sent a runner to the injured Jackson to get advice, but the groggy Jackson was in no condition to be of much help, and Stuart could only do as he thought best.

The night battle was sheer madness. A Federal cavalryman, observing the battlefield from high ground to the north, later wrote: "A scene like a picture of Hell lies below us. As far as the horizon is visible are innumerable fires from burning woods, volumes of black smoke covering the sky, cannon belching in continuous and monotonous roar; and the harsh, quick rattling of infantry firing is heard nearer at hand. It is the Army of the Potomac, on the south of the Rappahannock, engaged at night in a burning forest. At our feet, artillery and cavalry are mixed up, jammed, officers swearing, men straggling, horses expiring."