Thank You Eileen as usual I'm walk around quite a bit and keep you guessing I think but I'm delighted tonight to talk about one of my favorite battles and it's the Battle of Chancellorsville now a couple years ago when I was laying this all out I got to this timeframe of the calendar and I looked at and says oh my gosh chances Ville Vicksburg Gettysburg one run after another Vicksburg is the presentation's June 13th Gettysburg is on July 2nd both during the timeframes of those battles as well and in my mind these are the big three yeah you can throw in Antietam you can certainly throw in in Shiloh and every single one of these battles is fascinating to me but Chancellorsville has a special place in terms of how I look at the Civil War era but I found out that it's not all that known among the general public and I was very surprised that I think I still am to a certain extent surprised by that but I think it's much better known in military circles because it is such a great battle to study if you want to learn about military leadership and strategy this is robert e lee's strategic masterpiece and by the time we get done with this you understand why but if he'd had a different commander a much more aggressive commander it could have been his demise as well and also I think by the time we get done with this you'll see why I say that but let's go ahead and move on because tonight in fact the next three lectures or discussions there's a lot to cover and we're going to go over we'll probably be in the neighborhood of an hour to half or so I'll try to move along but it's in that neighborhood okay we have to start this one with taking a look back at the last battle we discussed which of course is Fredericksburg December of 1862 Fredericksburg right there in the Rappahannock River the problem that the Union had not a very sophisticated commander looking in terms of his battle plan wave after wave after wave of Union troops attacking into the teeth of some pretty robust Confederate defenses especially on Mary Heights the sunken road the Stonewall and they just beat themselves bloody to no end at all this was probably one of the most lopsided battles of the Civil War and easily the Union casualties outnumbered the Confederate by two to one so twelve thousand six hundred fifty three was the official total by the time you get done you've got the winter of sixty two sixty three and especially December sixty two things were looking pretty grim the war wasn't going that great in the West there was lots of political issues and problems the financial strains in the country were growing it was as probably as low as the Union was going to get in terms of its morale and how it view things the country is demoralized the press as the press was likely to do then and now we're savaging Abraham Lincoln and I want to just play a real quick quote from the Chicago Tribune that will give you a flavor of the kind of criticisms that you heard failure of the army weight of taxes depreciation of money wants of cotton increasing national debt deaths in the army no prospect of success the continued closure of the Mississippi all combined to produce the existing state of despondency and desperation now not unlike today also political cartoonists were active and here's a fairly typical cartoon Columbia says where are my fifteen thousand sons murdered at Fredericksburg that's that was the approach for no good cause thrown away Lincoln's response well this reminds me of a little joke go tell your joke at Springfield Burnside's reputation was absolutely in the dumps after this battle is very tarnished and the Army's morale had dropped precipitously in fact the number of desertions was sky-high some of the problems the army was having burnside proved himself not to be a very good administrator and that counts in the long run he didn't manage to figure out how to get his army paid on a regular basis so most of these soldiers were serving and hadn't been paid for a long time the food was growing increasingly poor hartack but there was no soft bread the soldiers kept screaming for soft bread or fresh meat or fresh vegetables anything like that so even in an army that for all rights should have been well supplied scurvy was growing as well as other diseases and what time of the year is it Virginia we might think of Virginia as a balmy place the winter is 62 and 63 it was by no means that that way it was at the same time that the generals who were also disgusted had totally lost confidence and faith in their commander chief Burnside Ambrose Burnside and on the 30th you've got two people in the background here Major General William Franklin Major John Young General William Smith who were both both involved as cabal of quite a few officers trying to figure out how to get Burnside removed from command this is serious stuff they actually had a couple subordinates generals John Newton who was a West pointer and a Virginian a professional soldier in general John Cochran who had a political background so he was savvy to politics of the day went up to Washington DC in search of Congress now you think the Cochran being a politician would understand that once the legislative session is done Congress goes back home so he doesn't find Congress there he founds Seward instead Secretary of State Seward and they tell they tell their tale of woes about how miserable commander Burnside is and how they need to get rid of them Seward takes them in to see Lincoln that wasn't what they expected but now they're in with the commander in chief and they tell this story again to the commander in chief and Lincoln quickly a message to Burnside without explaining what's the background of his message and the message is this I have good reason for saying you must not make a general movement of the army without letting me know the reason for that is these generals had told the commander in chief that Burnside was planning another offensive now the last one had just ended in a disastrous way he's planning another one no one has faith in this man well this caught Burnside by surprise he hustles up to Washington DC and December 31st and meets with with the commander-in-chief then and that meeting does not go well and he finds out that there are people who are lobbying against him who are trying to get him removed imagine how a man with little confidence in himself is going to react to hearing that there are many people many of his fellow officers are trying to get rid of him so he goes back very despondent now one person I haven't mentioned yet is fighting Joe hooker he was without a doubt the most vocal he wasn't necessarily involved with the same cabal of officers who were working behind the scenes to get Burnside removed but he was out there and he was very obvious in terms of what he was doing in fact he told one newspaper reporter from the New York Times of the day that he denounced the commanding general as incompetent I didn't stop there he had to go farther and the president and the government in Washington has imbeciles and played-out that's our man Joe hooker and certainly this is no surprise to Burnside hearing these kinds of things Burnside is able to convince the government Lincoln in particular and Stanton and Halleck to launch an offensive in January now if you know anything about soldiers they don't like we don't like to fight in the wintertime necessarily can you think of a more miserable I'm an experienced typically you wait till the summer camp spring or the fall campaign seasons but he launched an offensive in the height of the winter campaign he is he attempts to outflank so he's going to move up the Rappahannock River and then cross it some Fords and get Lee's army in a compromising position on the flank it goes well for maybe two or three hours and then it starts to rain and it rains for four days and it rains hard in January in Virginia and it doesn't take long for everybody to get very miserable that's the least of the problems they're on just a handful of roads that they try to move through and those roads are dirt roads maybe an occasional spot for a mile or two that might be planked over but it large part they're dirt roads now what happens when you bet hundreds and thousands of soldiers and wagons and horses and mules all covering the same terrain and a downpour of rain it turns into mud and the stories you hear about this mud marks are horrendous the soldiers would walk after the first couple regiments will walk through you start walking in your boots and it wasn't unusual for the boots to be pulled right off your feet then the artillery and the supply wagons come through and by the time they get there a lot of these wagons were sinking down to the hub of the the spokes of the wheels and there were scores of horses and mules that broke their back and died of exhaustion trying to pull artillery pieces and wagons out of the mud well and meanwhile the Confederates on the opposite side are kind of watching this at a distance and you can imagine what their reaction is they're enjoying the heck out of this whole scene here's one ditty you've got to love the rye sense of humor of the Union soldier Confederates as well during the Civil War here's one ditty that I think will sound rather familiar but it takes a different turn now I lay me down to sleep in mud that's many fathoms deep if I'm not here when you awake just hunt me up with an oyster rake gets right to the point doesn't it the offensive is called off and everybody is relieved not the least being the Confederates themselves not too long after that on the 24th Burnside has written a general order and he is counseled by a couple of its staff officers general before you actually deliver this order you need to go up and talk to President Lincoln about it so he hustles back up to Washington DC and sits down with President Lincoln and here's part of general order number 8 General Joseph Hooker having been guilty of an unjust and unnecessary criticism of his superior officers and having by the general tone of his conversation endeavor to create distrust and the minds of officers who have associated with him is hereby dismissed from the service of the United States as a man unfit to hold an important Commission during crisis like the present now Burnside goes on to mention a couple other names these very officers we were mentioning before saying they should also be relieved and Lincoln's reaction is this he ends up these and here's one of the terms is mr. president if you don't do this I will resign my position Lincoln took them up on the second part of the offer and decided to go looking for a new commander so who do you look for for a number of reasons Joseph Hooker looked to be the man he's one of the more senior commanders he was very aggressive and one of the things that Lincoln liked about him unlike McClellan unlike some of these other officers we were been talking about he didn't have overt political ambitions about him he certainly talked out of turn quite a bit but for whatever reason Lincoln decides that he needs to take a chance on Hooker that perhaps hooker can turn this thing around who is fighting Joe hooker in 1837 West Point graduate he fought in the Seminole War and in the Mexican War he resigns in his commission in 1857 so many of these officers we talk about that's the case they were out of the army when the war started he comes back in but late enough so he doesn't make the Battle of first Bull Run a few days later he has a chance to get introduced Abraham Lincoln so what's he say to Abraham Lincoln I was at Bull Run the other day mr. president and it is no vanity in me to say that I'm a damn sight better general than those that were on the field that day okay well he does get a feel command pretty quickly and he he does well starts as a brigadier general in May of 62 he's promoted to Major General so he's commanded the division by that time and you might remember him at the Battle of Antietam because his is the first Corps now that's going to be attacking south across the cornfield towards Antietam and it was only at the point in time when he was injured at a critical moment in the battle that he's injured and taken off that his particular Corps attack kind of loses some steam and falls apart so he performed very well there he performed well at Fredericksburg a little bit later and he was in command of a division a grand division actually two Corps at Fredericksburg itself now a little bit about his personal he's a bachelor you probably have heard most of you have heard that the term hooker originated because of him now there's some debate that now the term had been in use long before hooker came around but there was a place in in Washington DC known as hookers division I'll let you figure out what those ladies did in that neighborhood he had a reputation for drinking but those who knew him well enough said that it wasn't so much that he was a drinker in fact John Hay won a Lincoln Secretary said of him what little he drank made his cheeks hot and red and his eyes brighter so maybe he couldn't hold his liquor very well but he had that reputation being a farmer out in California after he retired from the military he got the nickname fighting Joe hooker because of a mistake that a newspaper reporter was when sending in a report from the Battlefront one day they said fighting - Joe hooker and somehow newspapers connected the two things now you would think that this would be a great nickname for somebody who prided himself being courageous and brave and a good fighter hooker didn't particularly like the nickname for whatever reason but he is indiscreet in the worst way in terms of what he says to people and how he undermines people behind their back and perhaps to a certain extent in front of their face as well so Lincoln knows he's got a problem and he needs to address it and here is perhaps my favorite Abraham Lincoln quote of all time I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I'm not quite satisfied with you I think that during general Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambitions and forwarded him as much as you could in which you did a great wrong to the country into a most meritorious and honorable brother officer I have heard in such a way as to believe it as you're recently saying that both the army and government needed a dictator of course it was not for this in spite of it that I have given you the command only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators what I now ask of you is military success and I will risk the dictatorship I fear that the spirit for which 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 be put down neither you nor the polian 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 but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories there's lots of reasons I like that I think in a body so many of the qualities that Abraham Lincoln represents and embodied himself the part that really struck me though is that comment give me victories and I'll risks the dictatorship now that's both very humorous and it's not an idle idle comment on Lincoln's part I don't think in Knights in the past I think I might have been a little bit too been true romantic in terms of how I saw but I do believe first of all it's it's squelching any notion that that the generals should be considering that in the first place but I don't think that was very likely and I believe that Lincoln didn't think it was likely either and for one big reason his army wasn't fighting and sacrificing to establish a dictatorship there was something much bigger in place than just that so hookers the man and what does he do once he gets into command in fact the first thing that happens and this certainly is aided by Hallock and Lincoln himself generals Franklin Smith and Sumner are all relieved now you remember Sumner from the Battle of Fredericksburg much the blame of that battle failure could be rested on him he was past his prime shall we say he was the oldest General in the army I think at that time ix core was ordered to the peninsula and that's going to be a distraction now for Lee for the rest of this campaign the peninsula is recall way down south and the southern approaches to Richmond you have to fight all the way up through the Peninsular campaign just like McClellan wanted to but now let's get to the important part of what Hooker did in revitalizing the army first of all he reorganized the army and a couple of important parts he got rid of these grand divisions they were much too large and so he's going to have a series of course perhaps a bigger expanse of command and control than most people would think is wise he's going to command up to eight Corps once he gets to the battle but he didn't find that the grand division concept worked but even more important he came up with this new concept you know each one of our core ought to be able to identify who were who we are in the battlefield so if you're in the first division of the first Corps you're going to have this red disc on your cap and you're kepi and right down the line you can see what they did in terms of here here is the early stays now when what we know about the military today they all have their unit patch and they're very proud about that they identify with that and certainly one of the perhaps unintended consequences of this the soldiers very quickly embrace this idea and took pride in who they belong to before that time it was all about what regiments you're in that didn't change but now the division Association was enforced as well the next one is equally important up to this time intelligence in the Union Army was abysmal McClellan especially relying on Pinkerton detectives who were civilians in large part did not work and McClellan was of the like that he was always going to overestimate whatever reports he got by double so the enemy was always much larger than Heath than they actually were in his mind the Bureau of military information now there's going to be a commander by name of Colonel sharp who is given charge of actually heading up a group of people who would analyze intelligence information and they were getting it from a variety of sources you start with cavalry that's what cavalry did during that you're out there screening you're the ones who are finding and locating the enemy trying to identify what units are out there they also had balloons at Fredericksburg battle they had balloons that they would lift in the air and they were still able to use them for this entire campaign all on the north side of the river so it's somewhat limited and the visibility but it gives you a bird's-eye view of what the enemies got spies were used and signal men were used a much more sophisticated way of collecting information and finally I can't overlook the importance of capturing prisoners and in those days prisoners were much more eager to tell you what they knew then we trained our soldiers to be today so you get all this information coming from variety of different sources and the Bureau of military information would analyze it and then present reports to the commanding officers and throughout this entire campaign they are remarkably accurate in exactly who the Confederates have and in general where their units are and what strengths so huge different from previous ones he also hooker is also able to restore morale some simple things like getting the soldiers paid figuring out a better way of running supplies up and down the one rail line from aqueon Landing to farmath which is right next door to Fredericksburg so that they can get better supplies insisting that the soldiers occasionally gets soft bread instead of hardtack soft bread that's a much better thing to have and the morale starts to improve and not surprisingly the desertions start to drop precipitously it also made some improvements in communications I already mentioned signal flags that were used quite often times to pass information back and forth and for the first time in the war I believe we're going to see not just Telegraph's that are hooking up a battlefield to headquarters or major cities but within a battle campaign itself and you're going to see where this is important later on because hooker has two wings that are separated by 10 to 15 to 20 miles that he wants to communicate back and forth between those two wings and simply doing it by by couriers mounted couriers is not going to be good enough for him the problem that he had was the telegraph system was not up to being robust enough in a field environment to do that and they had a couple inventions that weren't quite ready yet and failed him in a couple important times but the effort is being made to improve communications and within the military within the actual battlefield itself and finally problem that they'd always had was security now a big reason why security was a problem because newspaper men like to get a scoop and sent it back to the newspapers and and hooker knew that he would have to keep his plans secret as much as possible this worked to great advantage advantage form because that meant that if it gets in northern newspapers eventually it's going to pass across the Rappahannock River and trade for some tobacco and the the southerners going to read about it so if it never reaches the newspaper the Confederates don't know what you have in mind the problem was he kept his information to himself most of the time and didn't even tell his subordinate commanders what he had in mind what he intended to do so there was a double aspect to that one the Confederate Army so far this has all been about the Union they had in the winter of 62 63 serious problems and primarily arrested on horrendous logistical shortages they had the problem wasn't so much that the the society wasn't producing enough food and provisions and ammunition for the armies in the field it was as much or more to do with the one thin precarious rail line that stretched from Richmond Virginia up to the battlefield and the army in Fredericksburg it just wasn't able to provide to support the army and especially if it's not double track if it's not double track trains go one way and they wait you can't have anything else going the other direction when that's going on so they were near starvation the cavalry had to be dispersed for obvious reasons but in the middle of this winter they experienced something of a religious revival and a lot of that some of that had to do with with Thomas Stonewall Jackson he certainly didn't discourage the religious revival and incredibly devout man himself but the Confederate soldiers were going through a religious revival after this incredible victory but they're starving it's a tough tough winter many of these young men kids in many cases were from far southern states this was the first time that ever seen snow so they had a couple pretty haole shoes snowball fights to begin with but I'm here to tell you and don't have to exaggerate too much you can understand in the snow and the wet and the cold where you're living in tents or primitive huts with maybe you know an inadequate stove of any type you're cold you're starving you're miserable and disease follows shortly thereafter one way to solve that problem is that Lee sends a couple of his divisions part of Longstreet's Corps to the south and we're going to see that talk about that a little bit more in just a bit but this is a serious problem for the Confederates okay the next two slides you've got in your handouts as well but there's a couple points I want to make in each one of these slides the Union you can see that we've got eight Corps there are seven infantry Corps and a Calvary Corps and what's not listed here is the ninth Corps that that hooker is now sent down to the peninsula so it's out of the picture one of the things that he did in reorganizing the Army was to put together his cavalry instead of having them farmed out so that each brigade and each division had its own cavalry under that command of that local commander he put them generally into a cavalry Corps with three divisions here smaller unit but still a specific mission now can be established for that particular core and you'll see that in just a minute the other couple things I wanted to talk about here this is a mammoth army 130,000 plus but it's not all that rosy as far as hooker is concerned there are 33 regiments from New York and two regiments from Maine whose two year enlistment their two-year enlistment is up in the next few months in other words if I don't use this army in the next couple months my army is going to start to melt away that totals over 20,000 soldiers right there and if you look back at the Battle of Antietam early in the campaign for the Battle of Antietam Maryland and Pennsylvania raised a lot of regiments that were strictly nine-month regiments and guess when the clock was going to run out on those nine month regiments so you've got a lot of new green recruits in this army plus you've got close to 40,000 of your troops that in the next four to six months are going to be marching back home and let me tell you that's going to cause a huge problem morale wise in these units as well what do you suppose these soldiers are talking about and what do you suppose their reaction is when two weeks or a month before their enlistment is up they got to march and face the enemy in another brutal battle it starts to eat on your mind I'm sure a couple more comments here on the sixth score you look at the division strengths here 17,000 in the first Corps 22,000 close to 23,000 in the sixth Corps by far the largest Corps General John Sedgwick is in command of that we'll find out about him later but one of the reasons I think this is such a larger Corps is that hooker has specific designs for what he wants to do with them in the upcoming battle on the other side of the ledger is the 11th Corps Major General Oliver Howard is the commander of the 11th Corps he's the new commander the former commander was gentleman by name of Franz Sigel it's nice German sounding name because he was from Germany he left after the Revolution of 1848 came to the United States got involved in politics and made a name for himself and was a commander but he was a miserable commander only problem is the troops loved him and many of the troops that he commanded at this time some of them were green troops but a lot of them were more seasoned troops and a lot of them were regiments that were made up overwhelmingly by German and other foreigners and it that particular Corps the 11th Corps did not have a good reputation for whatever reason that soldiers again they love France Sehgal the slogan was I fights mitt Segal I fight Smith Seagal so he knew it's not going to be popular and instead they bring in this new guy Major General Oliver Howard a professional soldier but also a convert to Christianity in the 1850s and he's going to earn the nickname the Christian general and we'll hear more about him a little bit so that's the Union Army the Confederate Army okay look at this 130,000 a little over 62,000 does not look good what look good for the Confederate Army here's what you've got two Corps very seasoned troops they don't have problems with units that their enlistments are going to come up pretty soon that by this time the Confederates had a draft and these soldiers they knew they were in for the duration and all of these soldiers had most all of them have been in very tough combat these are seasoned troops and Lee had incredible faith in them two Corps James Longstreet with 1st Corps and Stonewall Jackson the second now before we get to little few more comments on Stonewall Jackson here's the problem I already mentioned that because of a variety of reasons because of the threat of the 9th corps and the peninsula and because this army was starving and he needed to have somebody help round up more supplies lease ends long street hooker and Pickett's divisions South and we're not going to see them for the rest of the battle that's a loss of 20,000 soldiers that are not available immediately available to leave now obviously launch tree is not going to be the commander the first Gordon longer it's going to be General Lee himself so he takes direct command the two remaining divisions in the first Corps that leaves six divisions that the Confederates have if you think back to last slide how many Corps does does hooker have at his disposal and in general his Corps have three divisions so he's got seven Corps eight if you count the cavalry and Lee's only got six divisions and as we go through here you need to keep that in mind because I might get sloppy in terms of matching these things what the differentials are in the terms of the strength let's talk about General Thomas Stonewall Jackson a little bit more though because without a doubt he's one of the more the most colorful people of the war itself he is West Point class of 1846 started near the bottom of his class but by diligence hard work he worked himself up to be 17th out of 59 when he graduated he was a veteran of the Mexican War like most everybody was that was his first time to encounter robert e lee the men got to know each other just a little bit but in 1851 just three years after the Mexican War he goes to work for the Virginia Military Academy at Lexington Virginia and he teaches experimental philosophy and is the instructor of artillery there as well he is not a popular instructor they called a palm fool the students made fun of them the students he had this tendency to memorize his lectures verbatim and he stand up in front of the class and deliver this memorized lecture they'd ask him a question and he'd just regurgitate part of the lecture that he had memorized before it was one account where they had actually tried to get him removed because he just wasn't an effective instructor but he knew his tactics and he's new artillery he certainly had a good feel for that by the time the war begins most of you are familiar with the story of him having great success at the Battle of first Bull Run where he got his reputation and his nickname of Stonewall Jackson one of the reasons for that is that the regiments that he raised and trained the brigade that he trained over at Harpers Ferry before he got to the Bull Run was probably the best trained Brigade on the entire battlefield and from that day forward there's nobody who's going to train his troops harder and certainly not on either side of the military there's nobody who's going to be able to get more out of his soldiers they could march longer they can march farther they could surprise the enemy and fight ferociously so he had that incredible ability but it's also worth saying that he was probably one of the most we would call him eccentric or insane some people at that time called him insane what were the things that he was developing the reputation being eccentric well he had this notion that his innards were all kind of discombobulated and so he would have to do things like he would stand for a long time with his hand up in the air to keep his balance and get his equilibrium back most of you have heard about the stories of his love for lemons I found it interesting he avoided pepper because if he ate pepper he found he was rheumatism in one of his legs would act up and he just was a very peculiar guy and he was an incredibly devout we would call him a zealot Christian a presbyterian very Calvinist in his approach and he was not the guy he'd want to invite to the dinner you know dinner party it just wasn't that guy but you got him in battle and it was amazing what he could do his self-confidence his aggressiveness he is determination it all came together and after he developed the reputation first at the first Bull Run and then in the valley campaign and second Bull Run and elsewhere his troops revered him and he had this legendary reputation among the entire population of the South by that time by the time we get to Chancellorsville he is almost as well-known and almost as highly regarded as robert e lee himself no one would be close to that maybe Jeff Stewart but not really stonewall jackson and robert e lee were at the pinnacle as far as the confederates were concerned and he is Lee's trusted lieutenant now what we tend to overlook is another very trusted lieutenant that Lee had was Longstreet but Longstreet as we mentioned already is out of the picture for this particular battle so quite a bit on on Stonewall Jackson hookers strategy then he knows he's got a much improved military his army is the morale has sprung back one of the things they did is the Irish Brigade hosted st. Patty's Day axela bration and they made a big thing out of it hooker himself decided to invite the president down they had a grand review and all the soldiers would be marching past Lincoln now most of the time soldiers don't like to March that all they did when they were on a day off was drill but here was something special the president United States was there so all these things helped boost the morale what's he going to do with the army now here's the basic plan first of all he'd learned his lessons well from Fredericksburg and the lesson that hooker learned was that it was a fool's errand to run against prepared defensive positions all that would get you with slaughter of your own troops that the thing to do was to somehow maneuver yourself so you could find a good defensive position and let the other guy attack you that was the lesson that hooker learned from the Battle of Fredericksburg so here's the plan developed and it's audacious most historians and military scholars would it was a excellent plan first of all let's start with the cavalry the cavalry would swing around and a wide berth cut behind the enemy and eventually the target would be here's the rail line between Richmond and Fredericksburg that's the target we already mentioned they're practically starving hooker knew that so if you cut that very tenuous rail line then Lee has to withdraw he can't possibly stay at Fredericksburg this is the this is the reasoning to do that you have to cut this rail line right here at Hamilton Junction because that's the intersection of two rail lines and just as important you've got bridges over a couple of these River the North Anna River in the south and a river you destroy those you can't you can't restore bridges overnight generally if you tear up some rail tracks you can get that fixed in a couple days but not bridges so that's the plan another part of this plan is deception they knew that the enemy had figured out their signal flag system so the enemy could read their signals when they were passing him back forth well one of the things that hooker did was use that to his advantage and sent signals back and forth indicating that the army was going to move out in this direction and head over to the valley and deceive Lee in that respect so those two things are going on that leaves the fifth excuse me the sixth Corps in the first Corps the truant cross at Fredericksburg and basically to fix Lee's forces right there because they think they're being attacked by a major force it is after all about 40,000 troops crossing the river and then take the bulk of the army and a huge sweep well behind the lines so that the Confederates can't see you're doing this find a place up streamed across the rivers and then come in on his unleash flank and catch Lee and this vise between two Corps over here and the bulk of the army on this side and Lee's forces would have to come out of the trenches and one or two things would happen as far or Seok is concerned Lee would have to fight and now we're going to fight on my terms on hookers terms or what he really thought once this line of supply communication was cut Lee would had little choice but to drop back towards Richmond though he wouldn't even have to fight a battle he could win in that respect let's take a look at the terrain of Chancellorsville this is not ideal terrain to be fighting on here this is kind of hard to see I apologize for that here is the the Rappahannock River and then right here that splits off the Rappahannock goes north and here's the Rapidan river right through here so we're looking kind of at the southern half of this here is Fredericksburg itself and in Fredericksburg as you recall from the battle you've got commanding heights in both sides of river you've got Mary's Heights in the sunken Road this is the place where the last battle the Union had beat themselves bloody to no good effect but on the north side of the river in commanding positions is the Union artillery and Lee always respected those positions of Union artillery did not want to cross into the teeth of that ten miles to the west is this little place called Chancellorsville and it's really nothing more than a a house a fairly fancy houses things were in that day but it's just any any road crossing excuse me on the wrong direction here and these are hardly advanced improved roads they're the same kind of dirt roads that we knew before we talked about earlier right here Catherine furnace this is an important thing to keep in mind prior to this almost from the Revolutionary period Catherine furnace had been just that it had been a place where they smelt iron ore and that takes a lot of charcoal and to get the charcoal a lot of the first growth timber in this region had been cut down and thrown into the Catherine's furnace to make the charcoal to convert the work on the iron ore so what you have here in a lot of places you can see the dark green that's forested terrain but it's not mature forest where if you envision you can walk through the trees and it's fairly clear you know the Sherwood Forest kind it's not bad at all it's scrub pine and oak and beech things like that it's very tough working through here it's second generation growth you're just not going to cut your way through and in most cases so just is enough we can't fighting that stuff until somebody orders you to and they they change their mind on it and then you can see there's clearings around the Chancellor's house itself a wilderness church over here wilderness tavern over here but most of this is very rugged rolling forested terrain it's not a great place to be fighting in fact for those of you know here Civil War history the wilderness battle is fought right here as well just about a year later year and a half later so that's the terrain we're looking at and again ten miles distance between these what I have circled it here in blue are the there are no bridges but there are Fords the place where perhaps Calvary or even infantry when the river is low can march across and good weather the key is when the river is low that's always a problem that was one of the things that defeated Burnside and in his mud March you know when the river rises a couple feet you're not taking the soldiers across there any any more even with pontoon bridges so these four words are going to be important as we get farther into this okay try to move along here pretty quick the opening moves 26th the 27th is when all of this starts that's when it kicks off and initially the first thing that happens one of the things that he had done to reorganize his units was to insist that they strip down and be able to move light we ought to be able to move our troops just as quickly as the Confederates are able to so the troops are issued eight days of rations mules but no wagons obviously you want to take the hilary but you try to strip out as much of the supply lines as you can we want to move this army quickly and they do so and they do so in a way that keeps it hidden from the union you've got to core down here about 40,000 troops right in the eyes of the Confederates they think that's where it's all happening and within two days April 28th and the evening of April 28th at nighttime the engineers are able to put across a pontoon bridge here against very light resistance it's it's strong enough to be able to alert the Confederates but it's still light resistance the next day they march and you've got the 11th Corps and the 12th Corps that come down here this is the wrap Rappahannock River this is a rapid down river down here one day later they're already crossed the Rapidan river they're on the south side of the river now with two Corps here and Meade's fifth Corps right here and you've got the second Corps moving close to another Ford right here I think that's us Ford this is all going like clockwork for Hookers just like he was laying it out and it's going well for by the next day by late on the 30th he has four core on the south side of the river the 11th the 12th this is the fifth Corps with me and here's couch's second core coming unstrung and it can position a couple more to quickly follow on here so this is going well and I think it's at this time that we can hear me excuse me hookers comments to his army having accomplished this thinking about it it is with heartfelt satisfaction the commanding general announces to the army that the operations of the last three days have determined that our enemy must either and gloriously fly or come out from behind his defenses and give us a battle on our own ground where certain destruction awaits him the operations to the 5th 11th and 12th Corps have been a succession of splendid achievement there it is as far as hook is concerned he'd accomplished his goals this is going perfectly exactly like plan he had ly exactly where he wanted him so how do things sort out the next day the 1st of May hooker sends his forces directly east towards Fredericksburg and the north you've got Mead and two of his two of his divisions down this road right here you've got sorry it's a little bit hazy here you've got one division moving forward you've got Howard and Slocum moving down in this direction so everything is looking going according to plan but by this time it took Lee about two and a half days to really respond to this because he was very much surprised and caught off guard on it but he sends Anderson had already had some elements there he sends more forces and Anderson's troops meet Slocum and Sykes division right here on the road and they clash and very quickly after that suddenly the Union troops start to withdraw and Lee can't quite figure out what's going on what had happened though is hooker decided that he didn't want to have the major engagement he didn't want to keep pushing forward he wanted to find that good defensive position to fall back on but having not explained this to a lot of his subordinate commanders many of them were just as mystified as I think Lee was at that time so by dusk on May first this is just a few hours later you find that Meade's forces had almost gotten to banks Ford that's their that was their objective and even though meeting no resistance whatsoever they were called back and returned back to this location here you can see these dotted lines that's as far as the Union Army got before hooker ordered them back into defensive positions and here's the defensive position he selected in a centered basic land Chancellor house right here in the center here's Catherine furnace so it's well north of that and then along the Turnpike right here the River Road and then a Turnpike that goes through here as well so that's where he decided he want to fight his Bell and Oliver Howard I've got his picture up here is the core that's on the right flank of the Union Army his weakest core the one that he had the last least faith in so by this time Lee knows he has to do something dramatic we'll get back to Lee in just a second I wanted to tell you a little bit more about stoneman's raid how that was going is because as you recall what's Tommen was supposed to do was head towards Richmond and north of Richmond to cut the railroad line and sever that communication line that was so critical to the Confederates by May first and that's what we're talking about May 1st hookers already in this defensive position hooker was kind of hoping that that Stoneman would have already accomplished that mission and he kept waiting forward and the first in the next couple days did Stoneman cut the line our railroads are our trains still arriving at Fredericksburg that would be the key if trains no longer were arriving in Fredericksburg you knew that the line had been cut so Stoneman was here on May 1st 34 miles away from those rail lines and not until about 2 or 3 days later that he finally reach the rail line and you recall when I talked about this earlier here's Hanover junction here are the bridges railroad bridges that were supposed to be the target for Stoneman neither one of those had been cut and here were the instructions that according to history that hooker had given stolen when he lived on let out let your watchword be fight and let all your orders be fight fight fight celerity audacity and resolution are everything in war so in in his mind hooker had given him great latitude and that stomas should know exactly what he had to do he was a big part of hookers plan Stoneman wasn't up to that task it had been Jeff Stewart all those things we talked about celerity audacity resolution those were Jeb Stewart but by this time the war they weren't necessarily George Tolman he was a bit too tentative in moving south and never did accomplish the mission he was supposed to accomplish but back on the in the front at round Chancellorsville on may 2nd early in the morning in fact the night before may May 1st you've got this classic scene right about here Catherine furnace now this is the bit deceptive the lines up here at the evening of May 1st and Lee and Jackson meet here and they sit on a log someplace in the middle of the force and they discuss what they should do and Lee now has left imagine this he has taken the huge chance and left one division Early's division plus another Brigade over in Fredericksburg facing the two Corps that were across the other side of the river greatly outnumbered and he brought Lee brought his entire rest of his army over here to take on hooker and he's still grossly outnumbered as they're sitting there talking about this basically he's got five divisions shorter five divisions against how many core by that time five core they're greatly outnumbered they're sitting on this log what should we do and here's the classic conversation that's recorded in history it starts off with Lee talking well general Jackson what do you propose we do Jackson points to the map and he points over here because they had heard that the 11th Corps was in the air that it wasn't anchored on anything was just out in the middle of nowhere and just there and it did appear that it was all oriented towards the south not towards the west so I started with Lee's comment and Jackson's points of the map I propose to go right around there what do you propose to do with it with my whole command so Jackson's going to take four excuse me three divisions he's got move his entire command over what will you leave me here to hold the Federal Army with the two divisions that you have here well go ahead talk about audacious talk about laying it entirely on the line why would Lee take such a horrendous chance because for almost a day Jackson has to March a master this some day Jackson has to march down here and these are these are rough roads with forests and encroaching on both sides down here all the way around the flank and then up here and then deploy his troops that doesn't happen overnight it happens it takes a couple three hours just to deploy your troops before it can attack so by all rights it was probably going to take it till the afternoon maybe the late afternoon before you can kick off this attack and in the meantime Jackson's not any help to the lead so here's Lee with two divisions McLaws and anderson while the rest of the army is marching over here why does he think and get away with it because in his mind he remembers from the day before hooker had been driving forward there really was no reason why he should stop but suddenly he did stop he withdrew in these defensive positions and that night they're hearing chopping and they're hearing digging in they're hearing lots of commotion like like the Union is digging and preparing for us to attack him so Lisa is okay I'm offensive-minded I'm going to attack him now here I think it's the critical moment of the battle and it's partly psychological but hooker started this knowing that there was strength in the defense and there were people on both sides of military who thought the strength the better strength was in the defense that these new weapons that we had in the Civil War always gave the defense the advantage and we're going to hear this in future battles as well hooker being a student a Napoleonic warfare embracing the principles of war that he as he understood it realized that defense wasn't one of the principles of war offense was one of the principles of war and why was offense and not defense because whoever was on the offense had the initiative the offense were the guy in the offense is the one who calls the shots that determines where the battles going to be who determines when the battle is going to be and under what conditions the battles going to occur and that's a huge advantage in most cases so Lee seizes the initiative because hooker led him and Lee made a incredible calculated risk that hooker wasn't going to go anywhere he was just going to wait for Lee to attack him dan will accommodate you but it starts with hooker having a turning movement on Lee now Lee is going to reverse the tables and have a turning movement in the form of Jackson attacking his very vulnerable right flank and again remember this terrain right here is mostly thick overgrowth it's not open plains by any means but that's the nature of the combat that's going to occur Jackson's attack hooker orders seizure of Fredericksburg because he doesn't know what's going on here and Howard and his 11th Corps he's hookin CERN that they are out in the air so early in this whole arrangement hooker orders the first Corps that had been over in Fredericksburg to march west across the river and to form a line B form a line that stretched from here all the way up back to the river so that that vulnerable line wouldn't be exposed anymore that you protect your flight on top of that twice early in the morning on the second hooker is sending commands messages over to Howard dig in shift your forces redeploy so that you can handle an attack that comes from the West what's Howard's response he does nothing for whatever reason he does nothing nor to his subordinates really do much of anything that would address the threat that might be coming in through the West a part of it is they're looking through this thickens and nobody's going to attack through they're not i shouldn't speculate but that was part of the the assumption that we're going on so now you have this series of errors and bad luck first of all jackson's forces had done a superb job of being relatively quiet wasn't the Confederates way but they had march discipline and they kept themselves quiet and out of the eye of the union as much as possible though there were a couple occasions where they were spotted in fact i need to go back here one general sickles in charge of the 3rd corps when this march first started kept seeing troops marching past katherine furnace and then turning south and one regiment after another one regiment after another what's sickles thinking they're doing exactly what hooker wanted them to there was drawing to the south there were they're retreating and later in the half sicles keeps in imploring hooker let me attack these guys before they get away we've got to attack him now and right at the end of the day he attacks the trail elements of hooker excuse me of Jackson's forces and if I can find this quote that's a good one he actually captures a few Confederates you think that they would be demoralized at that time but the Confederates tell them you may think you have done a big thing just now but wait till Jackson gets around and you're right yo Celts hell before night so you're passing this information forward and okay what is hooker to think what is Howard to think it's easy to think what you want to believe they were drawing hooker wasn't nearly as sure as Howard was about that by the way anyway going to the next day the beginning of the attack errors and bad luck I wanted to address what I mean by errors and bad luck in this respect two errors one the error that that you had in calling up excuse me the error that you had and watching all these troops marching past Catherine's furnace and think that you're heading and heading south the bad luck was Reynolds was late and getting that position on the flank of Howard he was late because there was a breakdown of communication going back to Fredericksburg that lost several key hours so he wasn't in position like he was supposed to be other part of the bad luck was having your weakest core in that vulnerable spot why were they there because that's the last place a hooker expected to have to fight so he put his weakest core there this is the luck of war sometimes you need both those things going in your favor 5:30 p.m. late in the afternoon you've only got a couple three hours of daylight to fight now Jackson's the pack is launched with general Rhodes division leading the attack followed by Colston's division and then you can't see it down the bottom but that's AP Hill's division that's the third division in line before the attack is launched here's Jackson's message - generally the enemy has made a stand at Chancellor's which is about two miles from Chancellorsville I hope as soon as practicable to attack I trust that every kind Providence will bless us with great success and it did the Union forces are overwhelmed very quickly start to break and you can see just by the disposition in these troops right here you don't want to have the enemy forces overlapping you so you are being attacked right down the throat of this road and you're also seeing troops break through on either side of that road and you start to have units some units stand fast and fight hard and many of the units broke the next quote I wanted to play here then is basically Colonel Leopold von gilsu who is right at the tip of this his unit is right here right here and his description of what happened now he obviously is going to embellish it a little bit to his favor but I'll let you listen to it as well here the whole line was at once engaged furiously and my Brigade stood coolly and bravely fired three times and Stood Still after they had outflanked me already on my right the enemy attacked now from the front and rear and then of course my brave boys were obliged to fall back retreating I expected surely to rally my Brigade behind our second line formed by Scholz's division but I did not find the second line it was abandoned before we reached it we were surrounded not by the few stragglers that always fly like chaff at the first breeze but scores rushing into the opening some with arms and some without running or falling the noise and the smoke filled the air with excitement and to add to it dieckmann x' guns and caissons with battery men scattered rolled and tumbled like runaway wagons and carts in a throw to city more quickly than it could be told with all the fury of the wildest hailstorm everything every sort of organization that lay in the path of the mad current of panic-stricken men had to give way and be broken into fragments that quote right there tells you the advantage you have with initiative and the shock that's involved with taking advantage of that initiative keeping the enemy off-balance they responded like Jackson figured they would they broke and they fled the battlefield not all units and increasingly as the as the attack move forward the Confederate lines start to lose cohesion and the Union line starts to get bolstered more and more but it's very much a rout there's no no other way to be able to play the state it the Union right is routed Hooker tries to rally his troops as best as he can he is courageous he is out in front he doesn't mind putting himself in threat by any means and over time as they move forward the resistance begins to both grow there is one point in time that Pleasanton who is a member he's a Calvary commander but he gets about 20 pieces of artillery at Hazel Grove and won't be talking about that just a second here and gets them in a position and gets some infantry to rally around him and blunts one in the attacks now he says there's 5,000 Confederates say well there might be more like 200 in this attack but I'll let you hear what Pleasanton has to say about that particular action the rebels came on in line five and six deep with but one flag a Union flag dropped by the 11th Corps I suspected deception and was ready for it they called out not to shoot and they were friends at the same time they gave us a volley from at least 5,000 muskets as soon as I saw the flash I gave the command to fire and the whole line of artillery was discharged at once it fairly swept them from the earth before they could recover themselves the line of artillery had been loaded and was ready for a second attack I poured in the canister for about 20 men and the affair was over it was about this time that Jackson was fearing that he was losing momentum by this time roads units that first division had pretty much exhausted themselves and now Colston's units were in the fray as well and Jackson is riding wherever he can pushing his imploring his troops to go forward and this was his common over and over and over again that evening press four press four press forward when he did discover that they had pretty much taken the ground as it was getting towards dusk and by the time you get to nightfall he still wanted to be on the attack but his soldiers have pretty much gone to ground by that time about nine o'clock he and a few of his staff officers actually venture out in front of the lines now they think that there's still quite a ways away from where the Union lines are I think they were but it's forward of the Confederate lines and normally you do this and there's somebody who knows you're passing through the lines the expect you to come back through again in this case at 9:30 there's an awful lot of confusion when Jackson and his folks are returning to the lines and there are Confederate units now that take the staffs under fire not just Jackson staff but there's ap Hill and so with his staff officers out there as well and in the melee Jackson is hit he's sitting his right hand he's hit and his left arm and his bone is shattered right here in his left upper arm and it's a devastating blow but it's not a killing blow he's quickly and everybody's concerned of course because he's reached heroic proportions by this time they get a litter they start carrying them off the battlefield in the litter but as they're carrying them off in the middle of the darkness you can't see they've already talked about the nature of the terrain there's a point in time where the litter bearers stumble and Jackson comes spilling out of the litter and falls hard on his left side only aggravating all of these injuries that he already had they get them back on the litter and they they take them out so you've got an issue now of who's in command at this critical moment who's going a man Jackson hands over command to AP Hill is not too much longer that AP Hill's calf is clipped by piece of artillery shell fragment and he's now out of the picture so he can't he pass his command to the one person who had the reputation and had the respect to the troops and that was Jay EB Stewart Deb Stewart cavalry commander now is going to be in charge of of Jackson's 1st Corps for the rest of the campaign word gets back to Lee and here's Lee's comments when he gets the word I have just received your note informing me that you were wounded I cannot express my regret to the occurrence could I have directed events I would have chosen for the good of the country to be disabled in your stead I congratulate you upon the victory which is due to your skill and energy so in Jackson's moment of greatest triumph he's cut down and taken from the battlefield and this is part of the legend that has grown up about Jackson ever since May 3rd is a very critical day in the combat the morning of May 3rd steward if nothing else he's in a very aggressive commander and he knows exactly what Lee wants him to do with his core and that's attack attack attack by 7:30 they're on the attack take a quick look at this that this is important also they've got this peculiar pocket right here this is the core of the Union position the 3rd Corps the 12th Corps the 2nd Corps all in here third with sickles couched Slocombe Howard now has moved from the right all the way over to the left of the position a relatively secure position Meade now is on the right flank as well as general Reynolds Corps and take a clip post look at this if the if the Confederates are going to attack right here what's to prevent Meade from attacking into their flank and handing them in their flight now that's to come up here pretty soon this particular battle on the third is every bit as vicious and is brutal and is extended as when we talked about Antietam a couple months ago it went on for several hours but something occurred right before the battle even began that was crucial right here it's very hazy you can't see but this is Hazel Grove right here that is the key terrain in this particular battlefield but it's kind of this bulge I mean this bulge right here is bad enough but then to have a bulge that would extend out here hooker decided to evacuate Hazel Grove before the beginning of the battle the problem was whoever controlled Hazel Grove had the best artillery position and controlled the entire battlefield so hooker made a mistake there as well he surrendered that and that's basically eventually what's going to turn the tables on this whole battle it's a brutal combat wave after wave one that side would attack the other side would a counter attack back and forth kind of thing as the Union forces were depleted their ammunition another unit would be brought forward and hooker was trying to control all these things as much as possible and meanwhile Lee with his two divisions are holding they're conducting attacks simply to hold this portion of the Union line in place now what you can also see here this these two armies the the first Corps and leaves two divisions are still essentially separated they're not able to coordinate and the key now in this battle is to rejoin these two forces together you can see now that the Confederates are starting to make inroads here is Hazel Grove high ground with a commanding position on Fairview Fairview Heights that's where the Union Community artillery was and generally the Union had better artillery and better success in this battle because of the commanding position here the Confederate artillery is going to win the day as you get closer to the fight now Stewart launches Hess divisions Colston's divisions and Roe's divisions wait a minute who's health well health is the person that took from ap Hill who was commander of that division before he's injured just a little bit later a couple hours into the battle in this crucial day the Confederate artillery is taking fire from Hazel Grove as I mentioned and one of the places are able to target is right here that's chancellor house and by that time the Confederates know that chancellor house is the location the hookers headquarters so why wouldn't you take that under fire as well and the confederates have a couple rifled artillery pieces that have the range to be able to do that at 9:15 hooker is just entertaining general couch who's coming to the headquarters to coordinate some units we relocated and he's standing close to a pillar right in the porch of a chancellor's house when one of those rounds hits that pillar splits it right open and one side of that pillar comes crashing down on Hooker so now hooker is injured the problem with maybe this is part of the luck as well the problem with hookers injury there's no blood involved now we would understand this is a concussion and that's a serious injury he's knocked unconscious for a while but eventually regains consciousness and now there's confusion should he hand over command who should step four in a command couches there he's the logical person to take command but he's a little bit hesitant because his commanders apparently maybe he's okay we're not quite sure the fact of the matter is for the rest of the third especially and you can make a good case for the rest of this campaign hooker is not the same he had been affected by this concussion that he had just suffered but it's a bloodless wound the fighting goes back and forth about this time while there's still confusion over who should be stepping in command remember on the Confederate side they had no confusion it went from Jackson the Abie Hill to Stewart in an easy succession just like trained officers no should happen that didn't occur on the Union side 945 Mead seized I got this perfect perfect opportunity the Confederates are attacking right across my front I can attack my entire Corps we can bring in the first Corps behind us and get the Confederates in a flanking position and that could make all the difference in the in the combat here we could we could turn the tables on the Confederates hooker rejects that instead he hands the command over to general couch temporarily but I want you to listen to the instructions that he gives couch when he hands over command I turned the command of the army over to you you will withdraw it and place it in a position designated on this map so did he turn over the command no and that's just that's just March orders take the army move them here that whole cul-de-sac we were looking at before now we're going to the Union Army is going to withdraw back away from that and we treat from chancellor's house which was already ablaze by that time anyway and by 10 o'clock now with the withdrawal of the Union forces Lee is able to write over the Hazel Grove C's what amazing location this is to observe the entire battlefield and at that moment this is his greatest moment of triumph perhaps in the entire war he's rejoined the two wings of his army taking this incredible chance and now it's worked a great advantage for him now there's still a lot more of the battle to come believe it or not May 3rd what's going on in Fredericksburg several times over the last couple days hooker had sent messages on to John Sedgwick directing him to take whatever action seems to be most appropriate trying to encourage such weak to attack against Mary's heights but giving him some discretion so he didn't have to do that such weak kind of of this of the George McClellan school very cautious not going to be able to willing to take big chances never was willing to do that not stick his neck out unless he's going to be directly ordered to do so there's some confusion on the Confederate side there was a moment in the battle when General Colonel Colston who I believe is these chief of staff sends out a confusing message to general early and Early's forces over here would draw from the entire Fredericksburg area and then they find out their mistake and quickly send them back well it's in that point in time that the Union intelligence picked that up and thought the Confederates had evacuated the trenches and it was the perfect opportunity for Sedgwick I think that got in hookers mind and he always thought there wasn't much resistance there so he expected such weak to be able to attack across the river and then drive straight west into the hooker in the into Lee's flank that never quite happened anyway on May 3rd hooker finally is able to convince Sedgwick to attack and there's only one division there remember in Fredericksburg the entire Confederate Army was there the attack begins with Burnham's light division that's still part of Sedgwick score and they attack over here in the center of the Confederate lines and are repulsed the same kind of thing that has happened in Fredericksburg it looked pretty bad form but the next wave came in and in this case we've got it led by the 5th Wisconsin still part of Burnham's light division the 5th Wisconsin and a couple other regiments against much lighter defenses up here now quite frankly early didn't have a lot of troops in what is we all know as the sunken Road and the Stonewall the place where the the Union forces had practically destroyed themselves in December much thinner had Barksdale's Mississippians in here but it's still a very tough position to take and here's Colonel Allen's construction commander of the 5th Wisconsin boys you see those Heights you've got to take them you think you cannot do it but you can and you will when the signal forward is given you will start it a double quick you will not fire a gun and you will not stop until you get the order to halt you will never get that order you will not fire a gun you will not stop to fire so much of the time in the previous battle the forces would lose momentum when they would do the natural thing they would stop they would take the rifle they were fire and then they would reload and there you have a two side just blasting away at each other so the order was not to stop to keep going forward the unit suffered horrendous casualties but they did breach the line and once they got there this is some of the carnage that they saw on the other side of the trench line in Mary's Heights a couple very famous photos from the war itself okay that means again in hookers mind it should be easy now for for such weak to drive straight West tend to attack Lee on the opposite side of the army in fact early helped him out to a certain extent and he drew it through his forces straight south but by that time Lee knew what was going on he had the advantage of interior lines and he had shifted McLaws division to meet such weak on the road that one Road and Sedgwick excuse me that McLaws extends his line quite far and basically general Brooks and his division essentially walk into a trap they expect about a brigade there they encountered the division of Confederates and they went to ground pretty quickly so the Union attack there is halted May 4th it yet again Lee takes some huge chances he decides that he wants to consolidate half of his army three of his divisions against Sedgwick score near Fredericksburg in other words that leaves Stewart with just a couple divisions guarding hookers massive force over and over in Chancellor's area again if hookers want to do something with it this would have been the perfect opportunity he could have overwhelmed that small force that was against him but Lee thought he had the measure of the man that hooker would stay in the defensive and wait for him and that's exactly what would happen so by the fourth you've got 21 thousand confederates against about 19,000 union troops in this pocket right here Sedgewick is not an aggressive man in the first place it takes again the Confederates quite a while to organize their attack can you imagine how exhausted the Confederate troops had to be by this time after two or three days of hard hard campaigning but by 5:30 they launched the attack and the 6th Corps they've done their job they had dug in they were ready for this attack they held the ground except for one New York regiment one regiment that was Zouaves whose enlistment was up in about a week or so and they decided that was the time to leave the battlefield so except for that glitz said which troop held their ground and he's given some options he can either go towards Fredericksburg or he can withdraw across the river and he elects they withdraw across the river that night and slips away from Lee so now what's Lee do yet again he shifts his forces over to face Meade who's in a pocket right here up against the rapid and the Rappahannock River with us Ford is his safety vote and that's now the night of May 5th and May 6th Lee's intention is to attack a full-out attack at sunrise on May 6th against overwhelming odds you've got the first the second the third the 11th and the 12th and the 5th Corps all in this pocket and he has five five and a half some divisions to face that but he's going to attack the next day however that night hooker calls a council war and he gives his corps commanders the option should we attack or should we withdraw Meade was the most vociferous as we got to attack we got him exactly where we want Reynolds was in agreement and general Howard the one who had been whose core had been humiliated a couple days before wanted to resurrect his own reputation he wanted to attack as well that was the opportunity general sickles will hear a lot more about general circles when we get to Gettysburg fascinating guy anyway general sickles was not a professional soldier was an amateur I had a lot of skills as a commander but he did not want to venture forth he he abstained I'm not at a professional you guys decide Slocum was absent and couch who was still angry now that that hooker hadn't handed over command to him was fed up with hookers okay let's just call it quits well across the river and we'll start over again so it looks like the majority calls for staying footer actually attacking hooker of course decides to withdraw and the signs mean in the fifth Corps rear guard and the withdraw begins that evening so a couple hours later that night it should say couple hours later very early in the morning of the 6th hooker crosses the river with the artillery and by the time you get to early dawn some of the remnants of the infantry are crossing the river as well and they kind of catch the Confederates off-guard Lee wasn't quite expecting that to happen he was bound and determined to attack and was upset because he didn't have the chance to attack yet again they've been able to slip away so that pretty much ends the Battle of Chancellorsville and here's the tally Fort Union killed wounded and missing a huge number here missing are actually prisoners of war 17,000 Confederates 1,700 actually there's more Confederates who killed outright in this battle than the Union side they won overall but primarily because of this huge disparity and those that had been captured or missing so you've got 30,000 in this one battle now to put that into comparison 23700 at Antietam the bloodiest one day of the art of the war but this is an extended campaign it's much bloodier than Antietam casualties at Fredericksburg 17,000 the majority of those being on the Union side but here's the killer for the Confederates 23 fount excuse me 23 percent of the infantry in this one battle for the Confederates or casualties 12 brigade commanders are either killed or wounded on the Confederate side and then you've got Stonewall Jackson and how do you how do you compare the loss of Stonewall Jackson the newspapers in the south over the next couple months were speculating what his one loss meant to the army 25,000 50,000 the morale the impact now they could overplay that but that was the the impact that it had it's the costliest battle of the war today the aftermath in hooker here's what he tells his soldiers have take it for what it's worth the major general commanding tenders to this Army has congratulations on its achievements of the last seven days if it has not accomplished all that was expected the reasons are well known to the army it is sufficient to say they were of a character not to be foreseen or prevented by humans suggesting or resource' the events of the last week may swell with pride the heart of every officer and soldier of this army we have added new luster to its former renown we have made long marches crossed rivers surprised the enemy in his entrenchments and whenever we have fought have inflicted heavier blows than we have received that's his official statement his unofficial statement to general Doubleday later on was this that by this time there was lots of rumors circulating around that he was drunk that that's what explained his strange behavior after he he was had a concussion that's what had happened to him but oh the general must have been drunk he wasn't but here's what he told general Doubleday for once I lost confidence in hooker and that is all there is to it Lincoln's response was what will the country say what will a country say Lee's response I think it's even more interesting at Chancellorsville we gained another victory our people were wild with delight I on the contrary was more depressed than after Fredericksburg our loss was severe and again we in gained not an inch of ground in the enemy could not be pursued now you're going to hear echoes of his decision to go north and eventually the north and at least of the Battle of Gettysburg he'd let the enemy slipped away he kept hoping for this climactic Battle Jax's death part of the the myth and the lore of Jackson is how he lived but certainly how he died as well he had his arm amputated shortly after the battle and it looked like it was going well that he was recovering and then after a few days he got pneumonia and he's slowly but surely was slipping away and actually died on the 10th now right before he died his wife was he had always told his wife I want to have a few hours to prepare to meet my Savior I need to get my mind right to meet my Savior so she went in and told him that he was dying and his reported last words were again part of the lore of of Stonewall Jackson let us cross the cross let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees and with that he passed away and a huge outpouring of grief throughout the entire Confederacy as response to that now personally I think this wasn't nearly as devastating in defeat as Fredericksburg was for a couple reasons one the Union Army figured while they haven't beaten us we fought well we did everything we were asked to do we have the the Confederates at a great disadvantage it was our commanders who let us down hopefully they will get a good commander that lives up to what we can accomplish but another reason I think and I think a lot of the text books play this down too much at the very same time in the Western theater grant is on the move Grierson's rate had already accomplished quite a bit contrast versus rate which we'll hear about on June 13th with stoneman's rate versus raid was a great success Dolman did not live up to his expectations and Battle of Port Gibson what that meant was already on May 1st in the midst of the Battle of Chancellorsville finally granted figure out a way to get south of Vicksburg and get behind the Confederates and it looked like it was going well his army was already advancing on Jackson at that time and had the Confederates at a disadvantage so you can see good things are building in the West at the same time this another disaster in the east ok I better go through this very quickly because it's already an hour and a half into it I broke that down on hooker side of the strategic level on the tactical level and with the basic is the strategic level is getting his army on the south side of the river in a perfect position to take on we and in that case it was a marvelous plan it was offensive in nature he used maneuver to his advantage he was able to keep a secret from the Confederates and from northern newspaper reporters it was certainly surprised when he was able to move that quickly it not happened before that time perhaps it was a little bit complex the big problem was expecting such weak to do what you hoped he would do over in Fredericksburg and Stoneman to do what he should have been doing on the raid in the south once it got to the tactical level it all breaks down you go from the offense to defense offense again is a principle war not defense and hooker surrenders the initiative that's the overriding thing you should take away from this the challenges of unity of command kept command and yet he always gave these vague instructions to people like Sedgwick what should you do he didn't maneuver he sat and waited for the enemy to attack and he didn't use his force as well on the other side of the ledger you can go practically down everything one of these points than the principles of war and give Lee a big plus for what he accomplished and yet there were plenty of opportunities for leaves whole plan to fall apart if only he had an aggressive commander and the other side had called his bluff so offensive no question about it Lee was always going to look for the offensive as was Jackson as was Jubal early for that matter they were offensive minded commanders as was Stewart maneuver Lee had the advantage of interior lines means he could move from here to here much quicker than the Union could move from here all the way over here remember that delay that Reynolds had in moving like that mass and economy of force here's where he took his huge chances you leave one division over there in Fredericksburg you bring everybody else over in chances Hill and then you split your army again this defines every axiom of warfare you're not supposed to be able to get away with this but he managed to do it so Lee violates a basic axiom of war when he divides his small army in the face of a superior enemy but it all comes down to reading hookers mind and knowing what hooker wanted to do so he's victorious okay questions you you
