re: Born on this day 202 years ago…

quote:

---

Conversation between Lee and Jackson after the first day's engagement at Chancellorsville:

Hotchkiss returned to where Lee and Jackson had resumed their discussion and traced the route. There was a moment of silence. Then Lee said; “General Jackson, what do you propose to do?”

Jackson: “Go around here.” He pointed to the line Hotchkiss had shown.

Lee: “What do you propose to make this movement with?”

Jackson, without hesitation: “With my whole corps.” [31,000 men]

Lee: “What will you leave me?”

Jackson: “The divisions of Anderson and McLaws.” [14,000 men to face the 60,000 man Union army]

Lee: "Well you had better get on."

---

It was definitely an iconic moment but Jackson's flanking march and attack on May 2 did very little to alter the tactical picture of the battle when you actually look at what it did. Hooker had position his army poorly and done a bad job of making sure Howard's lines were secure and entrenched (none of which were true). While Jackson bloodied Howard pretty good that afternoon, in the end it was a move that made the Union position stronger and more compact. It also put Lee at a tactical disadvantage because his army was now split in half and the only way to bring it back together was to proceed with a costly, frontal assault against entrenched Union lines on May 3. Lee lost over 10,000 men in the fighting that day and while he succeeded in reuniting his army, he failed in his main objective to destroy the Union army before it could retreat back across the river.

Chancellorsville is Lee in a nutshell. He would win Pyrrihic victory after Pyrrihic victory, suffering high casualties, with little in the way of strategic success to show for it. Before the Battle of Chancellorsville Lee's army was occupying Fredericksburg while Hooker's army was occupying the town of Falmouth from across the river. After the Battle of Chancellorsville, Lee's army was occupying Fredericksburg (less Stonewall Jackson and 13,000 men) while Hooker was occupying the town of Falmouth from across the river. Nothing had changed strategically and one could definitely argue that Lee's costly victory at Chancellorsville set the stage for his ultimate defeat at Gettysburg two months later.