I won’t make too much of an OP in case nobody else is interested, but… super important battle for several reasons.
150 Years Ago this evening, Mrs. Fanny Chancellor, a widowed innkeeper with 6 adult unmarried daughters living at her very large home/business, had some problematic drop-in company: General Joseph Hooker and a party of about 30,000 (with twice that many more on their way). They had no reservations and wanted an open-ended check-out. She could have turned them away, perhaps, but she was the only innkeeper in the hamlet named for her husband’s family, so that wouldn’t have been hospitable.
She and her daughters and daughter-in-law and about a dozen women and children who were refugees from the war already were herded into a couple of rooms at the back of the house, apparently treated courteously other than not being allowed to leave for fear they’d serve as couriers to Lee, who Hooker rather hoped to surprise. He was more adventurous than his predecessors McLellan and Burnside had been and hoped to crush Lee’s forces in a decisive victory with his 90,000 troops; he knew that he significantly outnumbered Lee.
Also 150 years ago today: Stonewall Jackson fell back into the swing of things after returning from 9 days of R&R with his wife and their baby daughter. While with his wife 150 years ago last week he sat for this photograph; the photographer recalled later that he actually posed with a smile at first (unusual for the time) but that a gust of wind came through a window, messing up his hair and causing him to scowl during most of the exposure. Consequently his wife didn’t like this picture as she said it wasn’t how she remembered him. It would be, of course, the last photo ever made of him.
IIRC although it was a Southern victory 2 things turned this into a terrible setup for the South, first the loss of Stonewall Jackson created a huge void that caused sudden changes in command that made organization difficult for the coming big battle, Lee was really upset for the loss of Jackson, but then the second thing was that the victory caused Lee to be overconfident and he thought that his army was capable of everything for the coming battle…
Lee’s “most underdog” victory (he was outnumbered worse at Chancellorsville than any of his other victories).
Favorite moments:
General O.O. Howard’s men on the Union flank laughing at rabbits and deer suddenly running out of the woods toward them…not realizing the animals were being driven ahead of Jackson’s flank attack.
Lincoln’s rueful comment that, after the battle, Hooker seemed “stunned…like a duck hit on the head.”
General O.O. Howard’s men on the Union flank laughing at rabbits and deer suddenly running out of the woods toward them…not realizing the animals were being driven ahead of Jackson’s flank attack.
[/QUOTE]
There are descriptions of several battles in the Civil War (Shiloh, C’ville, and Chickamauga that I’ve read of) and other battles in that and other wars of herds of wildlife fleeing through fields and woods in advance of the armies. It’s such a dramatic image that I’m surprised it’s rarely used in movies. (I won’t say it’s never been, but I haven’t seen it used in one.)
Lee’s splitting of his forces was probaby as risky as Pickett’s Charge would be that summer. Had Pickett’s Charge worked it would be considered a brilliant daring move, and had splitting his already far inferior numbers for a reacharound at C’ville failed it would probably be remembered as a really stupid move.
Lee got too used to fighting third-rate generals. When he started facing generals who were as good as he was, the disadvantage of having a smaller army finally began working against him.
But a flanking move has a certain nuance and skill about it. Slamming forward into the center of a line looks like a desperate act of futility without much thought. Lee wasn’t all that badly outnumbered at Gettysburg and didn’t need to resort to such an act. At Chancellorsville, he was outnumbered almost 2 to 1 and had to think outside the box.
And the brilliant flank attack was really Jackson’s idea. A West Virginia boy, btw.
Stonewall Jackson trivia: he and his only surviving sibling, his sister Laura, were orphaned as children and brought up by several wild bachelor uncles. They inherited property from some of their parents and some of the uncles that was held in trust and they periodically bickered about money the rest of his life, with Laura asserting she had an interest in Stonewall’s house in Lexington since it was purchased with monies she believed she had an interest in. (I don’t know whether she was in the right on this or not.)
Laura, like a lot of West Virginians but certainly unlike her brother and many other West Virginians, was an abolitionist and pro-Union (two distinct things of course). Her husband was not and remained pro-CSA throughout the war, though their son fought for the Union, so it was a very divided and contentious family. She and her husband lived in Winchester, VA at the beginning of the war and Winchester changed hands about twice a week during the war- literally got ping-ponged back and forth from Union to Confederacy for years- and there was constant fighting around it, so Laura left it for the safety of Lexington, where she lived at the house her brother owned that she (rightly or wrongly) felt she had an interest in.
Whether it was family obligation or whether her claims that she had financial interest had merit, Stonewall allowed her to live in the house. He refused, however, to speak with her; they communicated only through notes and relayed messages. He was also adamant that she leave not just the house but the grounds whenever Confederates visited because he was determined she was not going to spy. After his death she remained at the property for some while, helping his wife and daughter financially even since like most slave owning southerners they were financially devastated by the war.
Since it’s gone into in detail elsewhere on the board I won’t repeat it here, but, for the benefit of anybody who doesn’t know and might be interested, Jackson was a very very strange man who today would probably be diagnosed with OCD and Aspergers among other things. He had lots of strange views about health (always keeping an arm raised if possible, sucking on citrus constantly, ice water baths, never sitting down except on horseback, etc.) and his students absolutely positively hated him (per 150+ year old story, anyway, they once plotted to kill him). That said, he was very romantic towards his wife; one of my favorite stories about him is his sending his men to their tents and quarters while he brought out a fiddler from the company and he and his wife danced around the campfire.
Lee was treated for textbook heart-attack symptoms in March 1863 and was confined to bed rest at a farm (strict orders not to sleep in his tent) for several weeks, and had not been long back on duty when Chancellorsville occurred. His probably heart attack is pointed to as possibly interfering with his judgment at Gettysburg, but apparently he was in top form two months before (and much closer to the heart attack) at Chancellorsville, so who knows.
Stonewall Jackson and Thomas Jefferson, IMHO, are two of the most interesting men in American History. They both range from genius to batshit crazy and everywhere in between.
A Brit here, chiming in perhaps a bit impertinently; but I’ve always had rather a soft spot for Jackson – having the impression that although extremely eccentric, he was “in his private and personal capacity” a sweet, kindly, gentle guy, and a devout Christian. Sorry to learn that his students loathed him. I’ve always liked the thing claimed (possibly wrongly), that both his own troops, and his Yankee enemies, called him “Tom Fool” or “Crazy Tom” – doing so, on the whole affectionately.
Bill Bryson, in his “A Walk in the Woods”, at the point in his walking the Appalachian Trail where he reaches Harper’s Ferry with its Civil War associations, suddenly launches into a couple-of-pages’ highly savage “hatchet job” on Jackson, whom seemingly he greatly despises. According to Bryson, SJ was almost clinically insane, obnoxious in interaction with others, and indescribably stupid – his reputation as an able general, undeserved and largely the result of a few lucky flukes. I’m no Civil War expert; but this passage in Bryson’s book, strikes me as very mean-spirited and harsh. I feel ambivalent about Bryson: he writes some excellent stuff, but he seems to have a nasty and vicious streak which – as in this instance – occasionally surfaces out of nowhere; and I see signs of his sometimes playing fast and loose with the truth, in the interests of attracting attention.
Jackson certainly had his flaws. He’s lucky in that he’s generally remembered for his best moments. But anyone who thinks he was a perfect general should examine his record during the Seven Days Battles.
My impression is that Jackson as an instructor was humorless and demanding, so students knew him as an incredible hard-ass. I imagine his own view would have been that he was simply uncompromising in his standards, and that this was the proper role of a good teacher.
Somewhere I have the book of his “maxims” which probably touches on this…
I’d like to think that out of class, he was approachable and kind toward students, and willing to give extra, further explanation (150+ years ago, the general accepted and expected approach to teaching was, by today’s standards, very harsh); but I admit to a sentimental prejudice in favour of Mr. J.
Dying during one of his high-water marks probably didn’t hurt his reputation. Imagine if Napoleon had died at Austerlitz; professional and amateur historians probably would have 3,000 “what might have been” conjectures about if he had lived and I doubt that Elba would have figured in any of them.
I disagree with Bryson, though; you can argue that Jackson was certainly as racist as most slave-owners and fanatically religious and probably wasn’t one of the great intellects of his or any other time and place, but he was far from stupid. While it’s true that reputations become extremely inflated, it’s also true that there’s a huge tendency towards “Aw, Napoleon wasn’t all that, anybody could become Emperor of France and take over half of Europe and Egypt in those days” type snark among historians and pop-historians. I read a lengthy article in a Civil War magazine recently dismissing Nathan B. Forrest as a dumbass hack and while the guy definitely shows that Forrest made mistakes I kept thinking that Sherman and others who actually took the field against him may have actually had almost as much insight into his talents as this guy with a full stomach writing about him on a computer 150 years later.
Though in general I think it’s easier to say who the worst generals in the war were than the best. For example, Braxton Bragg was an incompetent nutjob by anybody’s standards and Leonidas Polk a more sane but no less awful commander, but with Jackson and Lee you can always make the argument “Well, it wasn’t so much their genius as _____ timed with ____”.
For civil war or history buffs near Virginia, there is a reenactment this weekend. I don’t know what sort of “battlefield” this will be on, but I went to a reenactment of the Battle of Trevelian Station 2 years ago and it was very interesting, and the farm/plantation it was held at definitely helped with the historical feeling. The reenactors really get into their roles and many can speak at length about their roles.
Although that was more likely he and his men being utterly worn out. He’d utterly dominated the Valley, but doing so required constant aggressive movement and daring escapists, with little or no rest. Then they were swiftly pulled down to Richmond and went on the offensive there, too. Jackson apparently kept falling into naps; his men undoubtedly shared in the general lack of energy.
Not that Jackson didn’t have some major flaws; but his successes were genuine.
In another, similar issue, Lee may have only won at Chancellorsville because Hooker was injured. Fighting Joe was nearly killed by a cannon shell and some argued he was going in and out of lucidity due to a concussion. He was only briefly examined and the records of aides show they saw him being erratic and uncertain thereafter. This is important because his pre-battle strategy worked like a charm: Lee was caught between two strong Union detachments, and attacking either was likely to get him bottled up from behind. It was in fact, the worst strategic position Lee ever faced until he had to retreat from Petersburg. However, Hooker lost all control over events and his corp commanders were effectively left to fight it out on their own.
The Stonewall Brigade nicknamed him Ol’ Blue Light, for the supposed way his eyes would light up when battle was upon him.
I don’t think it takes much away from his reputation to say that he was very careful to maintain a good cartographer on his staff – that’s a sign of good generalship back in those idiosyncratic days (before doctrine mandated such a thing). But Jedediah Hotchkiss, his cartographer, is credited with a certain amount of Jackson’s ability to move swiftly and appear where least expected.
I’d love to have the straight dope on Fighting Joe’s injury at Chancellorsville. There was a talk on CSPAN3 last weekend and reference made to (paraphrasing) 1) a blood-blister that covered much of his body and 2) his sleeping for 27 hours straight at some point. Clearly he should have handed over command.
I believe that the injury occured the second day though so clearly the aggressive action by the CSA prob had more to do with their success than Hooker’s injury.
An interesting (if only to me):the notebook of Captain James Keith Boswell with a map he was making of the Chancellorsville fields. He was an aide to Jackson and, as the notebook implies, a cartographer; he was killed instantly by the friendly fire that mortally wounded Jackson, and that’s what caused the hole in the amazingly well preserved journal.
