"Let us cross over the river..."
Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson appeared to be recovering from his amputation but he had developed a severe cold, and on the morning of May 7 he complained of nausea and abdominal pains. His doctor diagnosed him with pneumonia of the lung. Although it is impossible to know for sure, it appears the pneumonia was due to a contusion suffered after being dropped from the litter. Certainly his weakened condition greatly contributed to the illness. Treatment consisted of cupping — heating cups to form a suction that brought blood to the affected area — and the administration of opiates. Lee was informed and he wished Jackson well in recovering from what could be a fatal ailment. "Tell him to make haste and get well, and come back to me as soon as he can," Lee said. "He has lost his left arm, but I my right arm."
On May 10 Jackson was told that he would probably not see the end of the day. He was comforted as he always wanted to die on a Sunday. As the day went on his mind started to wander. He shouted orders to subordinates and ordered A. P. Hill to prepare for action. In mid afternoon, in a strong but quiet voice, he said, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." And then he died.
His body rested in state in Richmond and was later laid to rest in Lexington, Virginia where he taught.
"What Will The Country Say?"
When Lincoln heard about the defeat at Chancellorsville he was shocked. Newspaperman Noah Brooks was in the White House on the afternoon of May 6 when Lincoln came in with the news. "Read it — News from the Army," he said. "What will the country say? Oh, what will the country say?" In fact, the country had very little to say. This is partly due to Hooker's security measures and censorship of the press. The news leaked out slowly, most citizens not knowing the campaign had started until after the army was safe across the Rappahannock. It also helped that the Rebels had suffered about the same number of casualties. The biggest reaction was an overall disappointment with Joe Hooker, a man many hoped was the general the army had been looking for.
Within the army, there was none of the whole sale demoralization and insubordination that had followed the Fredericksburg debacle. Instead there was puzzlement. The men had fought well and had not been whipped. Even still, here they were back in their old camps with nothing apparently to show for the loss of life. Although it was unfair and unfortunate, the Eleventh Corps' "Dutchmen" bore the brunt of the blame within the army. Having a ready scapegoat probably helped the army maintain it's morale. Like the citizens of the North, the men of the Army of the Potomac were now far less sure of Hooker.
After the battle, Slocum and Couch would attempt another General's Revolt, this time around Meade as commanding officer. Meade, though, would have nothing to do with it. Slocum backed away from approaching the president. Couch offered his resignation, stating that he could not command under Hooker. Hooker returned it but Couch tried again. This time it was accepted. Couch commanded Pennsylvania militia in the Gettysburg campaign, and was later transferred to the western theatre.
On May 22, Hooker removed George Stoneman from his position as head of the cavalry. Stoneman was instead made Chief of the Cavalry Bureau, and a year later he was back in the field, taking part in the Atlanta Campaign under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman. During the siege of Atlanta Stoneman and Edward M. McCook were sent to wreck the railroad to the south of the city in an attempt to dislodge Hood's army. Stoneman also received permission to try and release Union prisoners at the prison camp at Andersonville. The raid became a debacle when Stoneman himself was captured near Macon on July 31, 1864, by Confederate cavalry. He was part of a prisoner exchange in October of that year. He went on a raid against Confederate salt and iron works in southwestern Virginia in December. His last raid of the war, into North Carolina, was launched too late to be of much help to Sherman.
Hooker would remain commander of the Army of the Potomac for less than 2 months. When Lee began his movements north in what would become the Gettysburg campaign, Hooker moved to counter him. General in Chief Henry Halleck, Hooker's old nemesis, took the opportunity to remove Hooker. When Fighting Joe requested that he be able to pull the Harper's Ferry garrison out of the town and bring it into the Army of the Potomac, Halleck refused. Hooker countered with his resignation. It was accepted and George Meade was made commander of the Army of the Potomac. Hooker noted, bitterly, that after Meade took over, Halleck let Meade do whatever he pleased with the Harper's Ferry garrison.
Hooker still had allies in the Lincoln administration, in the form of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Treasury Secretary Samuel Chase and Abraham Lincoln himself. Hooker was transferred to the west where he was given command of the XX Corps and fought well under Sherman in the Chattanooga campaign. The XX Corps bore the brunt of the fighting in the battle for Atlanta. However, neither Grant nor Sherman liked Hooker. Sherman had dealings with Hooker in California and didn't think much of him. In 1864, after Maj. Gen. McPherson was killed, Sherman gave the command of the Army of the Tennessee to — of all people — Oliver Howard, who had been transferred west after Gettysburg. This was a calculated insult as Hooker had the experience and the desire to command that army. He once more resigned his command, as Sherman knew he would, and the resignation was accepted. Hooker waited for a reassignment, but it never came. He retired from active duty in 1868. He died in New York in 1879 and was buried in Cincinnati, Ohio.
John Sedgwick would go on to command his corps at Gettysburg, where it saw little action as a reserve. He and his corps distinguished themselves at the Battle of Rappahannock Station on the night of November 7, 1863. In the spring of 1864 he fought well in the Wilderness battles. On May 9, 1864, while out front inspecting the enemy's dispositions at the beginning of he Battle of Spotsylvania, Sedgwick was warned that he was too far forward. He brushed off the comments by saying, "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." At that moment, a sharpshooter's bullet hit him below the left eye. He died almost instantly, just over a year and only few short miles away from the spot where he failed Hooker.
For Lee, the Battle of Chancellorsville was a brilliant victory and the pinnacle of his career. He had taken on a much bigger army, boldly divided it not once but twice, and had — once again — defeated it. It may have been due in no small measure to chance, but — as they say — chance favours the bold. Lee seized the initiative and held it. His success, though, came at a high cost. While he had inflicted 17,304 Union casualties, he had taken 13,460 killed, missing, and wounded, himself — casualties that the Confederacy could ill afford. If you ignore the missing from the totals you see the South had 1,724 dead and 9,233 wounded versus 1,694 and 9,672, respectively, for the North. Ironically, as Hooker had sought to avoid a bloody frontal assault, Chancellorsville was — until that point — the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.
While the North may have lost the battle, it had manpower to spare. The South was winning on the battlefield but was losing the war of attrition. As Lee's now closest advisor and most trusted general, James Longstreet, put it, Chancellorsville was one of the Confederacy's "fruitless victories; ...even victories such as these were consuming us, and would eventually destroy us..." Lee had been depressed after Fredericksburg. He had mauled the Union army that December, but it had escaped safely over the Rappahannock. Lee was heard to say that he was even more depressed after the victory at Chancellorsville. "Our loss was severe, and again we gained not an inch of ground and the enemy could not be pursued." Lee had to take the war to the Union. He wanted the battle to be fought on northern soil and on ground of Lee's choosing. On May 15, 1863 he discussed strategy with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The result was an endorsement of Lee's plan to invade the North, an invasion that would culminate in the Gettysburg campaign.
Assigning Blame
As overall commander of the Army of the Potomac, the blame must rest on the shoulders of Fighting Joe Hooker. For sure, Hooker did make a number of mistakes. He badly apportioned his cavalry between Stoneman's raiding force and the force needed to screen the army. He gave up Hazel Grove at the start of the fighting on May 3, which was a grievous error. He should have moved aggressively on May 4 instead of waiting for Lee to come to him. However, these factors alone were not enough to lose the battle.
The main reason for Hooker's failure were his corps commanders, specifically Stoneman, Howard, Sickles, and Sedgwick. Stoneman failed to cut Lee's line of supply and communication. Hooker stated that had the trains stopped arriving at Hamilton Crossing as late as May 5, Hooker would have remained on the Confederate side of the river and done battle with Lee. Howard had ignored a direct order to prepare for a flanking attack on May 2, resulting in the rout of his corps. Sickles had failed to make a determined attack on Jackson's flanking column — an attack which would have probably stopped Jackson's flanking march prematurely — and misread Jackson's movement as a general retreat. Sedgwick failed to take the initiative and break out of Fredericksburg on May 2. Sedgwick also retreated across the Rappahannock unnecessarily on the night of May 4. A more aggressive general, like Reynolds, would have hit Lee in the rear near Chancellorsville or would have maintained the Banks' Ford bridgehead.
Fate, too, had played dirty with Hooker. If the communication to Reynolds in the early hours of May 2 had arrived promptly, Jackson would have had to deal with 2 corps on the right of the Union line, not one, and one of those corps would have been facing him head on. The cannon shot that injured Hooker on May 3 removed the army's leader at the very time when he was most needed. The errant message early on May 5 lost Hooker the Banks' Ford bridgehead, and any possibility of taking on Lee once more.
As Hooker would later say of Chancellorsville, "I won greater successes on many fields in the war, but nowhere did I deserve it half so much..."
