Hooker Gets Caught Flat-Footed at Chancellorsville
In December, 1862, a blunder led the Union’s Army of the Potomac to suffer a bloody defeat when it crossed the Rappahannock River and attacked Confederates in strong defensive positions near Fredericksburg. The Union forces were given a new commander, Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Aware that another frontal assault on the Confederates near Fredericksburg would fail, Hooker decided to get at them from the rear. The new Union commander had about 134,000 men, while the Confederates, under Robert E. Lee, had roughly 61,000. On April 30th, 1863, Hooker left 28,000 men in front of Fredericksburg to keep Lee occupied, and marched westward with 106,000 men to cross the Rappahannock upstream from the Confederates.
Hooker wanted to strike Lee’s rear, and catch him in a pincer between the forces under his command and those left behind at Fredericksburg. He stole a march on Lee, crossed the Rappahannock in heavily wooded terrain north of Chancellorsville, and got in the Confederate rear. However, Lee was not one to leave the initiative to his enemy if he could help it. When he discovered what Hooker had done, Lee divided his army. He left a small rearguard behind in Fredericksburg, and took the bulk of his men, about 45,000 Confederates, to meet Hooker. That violated conventional wisdom that deemed the division of one’s forces in the face of a numerically superior enemy to be a serious blunder. As seen below, however, Lee got away with it, and made it work.
