A Terrible Day for the Union Army
When he neared Chancellorsville, Lee doubled down on his violations of conventional wisdom, and further divided his already outnumbered army. He confronted 70,000 Union soldiers with only 13,000 Confederates east of Chancellorsville, and sent his chief lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, on a flanking march to fall on Hooker’s right flank. In a major blunder, Hooker and his forces failed to realize what the Confederates were up. On May 2nd, while Confederate cavalry screened his flank to keep the Union force from observing him, Jackson led about 28,000 men on a twelve-mile roundabout march that brought him, undetected, to Hooker’s right flank.
Late that afternoon, Jackson launched a surprise attack against the XI Corps on the Union army’s right flank, just as its men sat down for dinner. It caught the Union men completely off guard, and sent them on a panicked rout that soon sowed confusion throughout Hooker’s army. Jackson’s advance was only halted by the fall of darkness. Hooker, psychologically defeated and concussed from a shell that struck a post against which he was leaning, conceded defeat and withdrew. Chancellorsville went down as Lee’s “perfect battle”, and is taught in military academies to this day.
