Initiative is a word you see a lot in military contexts. Aggressive generals seize it, unsuccessful ones fumble it, wargamers even roll for it. In Chancellorsville, Stephen W. Sears examines a major U.S. Civil War battle decided to an almost unfair degree by initiative.
On paper, it should have been a Union victory. Their usual advantage in numbers was increased when a key Confederate force was pulled away from Robert E. Lee’s command, giving the North a 2:1 edge in troops.
Learning from the mistakes of his Federal predecessors, Joseph Hooker tried something different from the usual frontal assault into entrenchments. He employed an ambitious sidelong thrust utilizing telegraph wire and secret river crossings. For a while, it was even working.
So how did it all go so wrong? Chancellorsville was an epic disaster for the North, lessened only somewhat by the mortal wounding of Confederate legend Stonewall Jackson by his own troops. Otherwise, it furthered a running narrative in Spring 1863 of Lee’s invulnerability.
“In terms of men killed and wounded, only at bloody Antietam had more Yankees – 282 more – fallen to enemy bullets and shells,” Sears writes.
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| Joseph Hooker was widely disliked and distrusted by his fellow generals, in part because of his reputation for womanizing. Sears pushes back against a common myth that his ambles in Washington D.C. led to his last name being reused as a label for prostitutes. Image from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Hooker |
The major difference in Sears’s account from the standard ones you read in histories – like those of Sears’s mentor Bruce Catton – is in the handling of the Union commander. Often Joseph Hooker is portrayed as a braggart and intriguer who lost his nerve at the big moment.
Sears pushes back, claiming Hooker did a lot more right than wrong:
When the myths that have long obscured his generalship at Chancellorsville are cleared away, it becomes plain that however much Joe Hooker sinned, on this battlefield he was more sinned against, by inept lieutenants and simple happenstance.
Sears is a longtime chronicler of the Union side of the Civil War. His prior books Landscape Turned Red and To The Gates Of Richmond are masterpieces of strategic and tactical review which bore into the minute-by-minute drama of soldiers fighting and dying amid horrific slaughter. Both lay cases for military incompetence at the feet of the same leader, George McClellan.
McClellan dawdled when he should have attacked. Hooker did about the same thing and achieved a similar result. But Sears sees it differently.
For one thing, Hooker was all about initiative. He set out to undertake an ambitious attack to force Lee either to strike at his larger forces or retreat to Richmond. He froze Lee at the existing front near Fredericksburg while sending most of his army north across the Rappahannock River, unobserved for days. His competent intelligence network gave correct analyses for the first time of Confederate troop size and intentions.
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| Union engineers set up pontoon bridges at several places across the Rappahannock River in late April 1863, catching the Rebels off-guard. "On the whole I think this plan was decidedly the best strategy in any of the campaigns ever set foot against us," Confederate General Porter Alexander said after. https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/battle-of-chancellorsville/ |
Usually the attacker, Lee was in this case holding back. Most of his Army of Northern Virginia’s First Corps was too far away to be brought into battle; to launch an offensive Lee wanted all his men.
Hooker meanwhile was ever-so-confident, Sears notes:
Lincoln was heard to say to him, “If you get to Richmond, General...” at which point Hooker interrupted, “Excuse me, Mr. President, but there is no ‘if’ in the case. I am going straight to Richmond if I live.”
Yet no sooner were the pieces in place than this masterpiece of maneuver all went awry. Instead of digging in, Lee went on the attack, reclaiming the initiative once he saw Hooker’s force was divided. Sending Stonewall Jackson across a thickly-forested area known as the Wilderness culminated late on the afternoon of May 2 in a surprise attack on the Union XI Corps, one of the smallest and least disciplined corps in the Army of the Potomac.
The XI was composed of German radical freethinkers and led by a brave but inept leader. “Unimaginative, unenterprising, uninspiring, a stiflingly Christian soldier, Oliver Otis Howard was the wrong general in the wrong place with the wrong troops that day,” Sears writes.
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| Night was descending over Chancellorsville as Jackson's force descended upon an unprepared XI Corps. The surrounding woods, known as the Wilderness, were thought to be unpassable but only served to hide the Southern advance. Northern troops would have more reason to curse the Wilderness in years to come. Painting "The Battle of Chancellorsville" by Frederick Chapman from https://cwmemory.com/2013/05/01/a-civil-war-crossroads-may-1-1863/ |
The same could be said for other Northern generals. John Sedgwick was stolid but stiff when it came to advancing his V Corps against a holding force at Fredericksburg. A badly outnumbered Jubal Early delayed Sedgwick to the point Lee was able to back around and smash Sedgwick before Sedgwick could link up with the bulk of Hooker’s command.
Even less effective was George Stoneman, commanding the Union cavalry. Hooker assigned him to cut off Lee’s communications with Richmond, a task Stoneman never got round to as he got bogged down and flung random units of troopers across the state of Virginia instead.
Sears quotes Private William Aughinbaugh of the 5th Ohio after the battle: “I come to the conclusion that it was badly managed on our side.”
For the South, it was by contrast a brilliant operation of feint and counterattack, anchored by a unified artillery command that overwhelmed more numerous but scattered Union cannonry. The only fly in the ointment came when Stonewall Jackson followed up his crushing attack on Howard with an evening inspection of the front lines:
It was always Old Jack’s way to lead like this from up front, to see the battlefield for himself rather than rely on others, and it was a habit that worried and exasperated his staff.
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| A fictionalized portrayal of Jackson's wounding. In reality it took place in the evening of May 2, after the day's battle was over, and in an isolated area where visibility was limited. "Any victory is dearly bought that deprives us of the services of Jackson even temporarily," Sears quotes Lee saying once he got word. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chancellorsville |
Some North Carolina sentries were jumpy that night; three bullets wound up hitting Jackson in the left arm. Initially stable, Jackson died a week later, probably from pneumonia.
After the battle, this sparked some crosstalk along the Rappahannock:
“I say, Yank,” a Rebel called across one day. “Where is Fighting Joe Hooker now?” The Yank called back, “Oh, he’s gone to Stonewall Jackson’s funeral!”
Sears is always compelling reading when the subject is the Civil War. He pans across an active battlefield with his narrative lens, delving into piquant details like the background of a specific regiment under fire, or the fact one officer’s commission was not formalized by the Senate because they couldn’t figure out how to pronounce his name. Then he pulls back to give an overview of the situation at a critical time of day, and its implications. This lends his work both vitality and scope:
The track of the Army of the Potomac to Kelly’s Ford could have been traced by the trail of overcoats alone. “The Negros & poor white people followed behind & picked up what they wanted,” the Fifth Corps’ James Houghton noted in his journal.
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| How it was supposed to go down: Hooker was planning on a dual-pincer attack that would encircle and destroy Lee's army, with a sweeping cavalry attack shutting down rail routes to Richmond. But the many delays left Lee with ample opportunity to blunt each pincer individually. Image from https://rvanews.com/features/civil-war-the-battle-of-chancellorsville/91033 |
Sears isn’t a shrill advocate for Hooker’s leadership. He expresses appreciation for Hooker mostly in his introduction and conclusion. For the body of the narrative, he points out many things Hooker did wrong, from doling out artillery units piecemeal before the battle (he didn’t like the senior artillery general under his command) to assuming John Reynolds’s I Corps was where they were supposed to be, protecting the farthest part of his northern flank (instead of Howard.)
Sears positively notes how Hooker utilizes telegraph in his troop deployments as being a first in military history. But in To The Gates Of Richmond, chronicling an 1862 campaign, he criticizes McClellan for doing much the same thing. In fact, Hooker fumbled command control as his orders got lost and misinterpreted over the wire.
Ultimately, what ruined the chances for Union victory at Chancellorsville was the same tattered strategy that did them in at Fredericksburg, Antietam, and First and Second Bull Run. Hooker had all those examples before him but did nothing to balance the need for coordination and subordinate initiative.
In the case of Chancellorsville, on May 1 the northern flank of the Union Army under General Henry Slocum was well-positioned for a rear attack on Lee’s force at Chancellorsville. But as Sears notes, when fellow corps commander George Meade urged Slocum to attack the Rebels, Slocum had to say no. Hooker’s clear orders were to wait. The next day came Jackson’s surprise attack and a fatal loss of initiative.
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| The Chancellorsville battlefield as seen today. Sears's narrative brings out the warm verdant beauty of this section of Virginia farmland in its full springtime splendor, before it was wracked by violence and death. Image by justmrmom from https://www.reddit.com/r/CIVILWAR/comments/1fzw887/fairview_farm_at_the_chancellorsville_battlefield/ |
Worse yet was Hooker’s May 4 handling of Sedgwick’s situation. Sedgwick’s V Corps was all alone as it advanced from Fredericksburg to support Hooker’s main body miles away:
In reply to Sedgwick asking if he could expect substantial help if he was attacked in the meantime, Hooker offered cold comfort: “You must not count on much assistance without I hear heavy firing.” Thus Uncle John Sedgwick was left to puzzle out just how important his salient really was to a commanding general who did not appear eager to help him defend it.
Initiative undid the Union forces in many ways. After being knocked unconscious when a cannonball struck a pillar he was leaning on, Hooker was never able to direct his forces coherently until he ordered their retreat on May 5, over the objections of most of his lieutenants.
Lee meanwhile reaped the full benefit of his initiative by running off a foe twice his army’s size. He then took this lesson too much to heart, by following his greatest victory by taking the war to Pennsylvania. That time, initiative proved more costly to the attacker. By then, as Sears notes, Hooker’s command was over. The Army of the Potomac, though “shocked” and “disappointed,” would be ready to fight again.
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