All right. So, we were talking about Antietam. And how that was the moment when the Union realized...
Preliminary proclamation.
Preliminary proclamation where it's like, okay, slavery has to be a thing as a central part of the Civil War. And so, where does that take us? Also very bloody battle. The generals, McClellan, is the end of the McClellan chapter. And that takes us to Fredericksburg.
Fredericksburg. So, what happened in Fredericksburg?
Fredericksburg was a... It's another victory for Lee. It's an easy victory for Lee. He has a very strong position on high ground across the Rappahannock River from the Union forces who are opposite Fredericksburg. His opponent is a guy named Ambrose Everett Burnside, who's a very affable guy, kind of a nice guy, who gave us the word sideburns. He wore his whiskers. They came down and came up and made... and it wasn't a beard and they were called Burnside's at the time. The Burnside cut, which was transposed into sideburns. Everybody liked him. He just wasn't very bright in some ways. He became... he's a politician after the war, so he went into the right field, but he was... his idea at Fredericksburg was to... in the end it wasn't his original plan, but he ended up launching frontal assaults one brigade at a time against very strongly entrenched Confederates and it was a butchery for... and another horrible defeat for the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln was really cast down by it and it just seemed that in this... in this Eastern theater, he could not get any good news. He's getting good news from the West. He's not getting any good news here. He has this revolving door of commanders. Burnside tried another march in early... in late January 1863. He was going to get around Lee's flank, but he had horrible weather. His army... he got stuck in the mud. It was... then it was lampooned as the mud march. And he removed him from command. So, now he has another commander in the Army of the Potomac. So, you've had McClellan and Burnside and now a guy named Joseph Hooker. You have no continuity at the top in that army. You have complete continuity at the top in the Army of Northern Virginia, which is a huge advantage to the Army of Northern Virginia.
So, this is where the famous words of Robert E. Lee where he was watching the slaughter...
It is well that war is so terrible or we should grow too fond of it.
What did he mean by that?
He was getting... I mean he was watching his soldiers butcher Union soldiers and I guess kind of enjoying it. He's in a really strong position with really good artillery supporting his infantry. And the Union troops are just attacking them and not having any success. And so there he is. He's up there with James Longstreet and other people and watching it and he... unlike McClellan was willing to risk obviously piling up casualties in every battle. Didn't have that many at Fredericksburg. There were about 12 and a half thousand US casualties at Fredericksburg and about 5,500 Confederate casualties because they were so well protected in their defensive lines.
So, you are working on a manuscript on Chancellorsville.
It's a legendary battle for many reasons.
Can you break down some of the military details of what made up that battle to give us a sense of in general what battles were like?
This is often described as Lee's most successful battle. It's him against Joseph Hooker. It's the last battle that Lee and Jackson fought as a team. Lee and Stonewall Jackson with Stonewall Jackson as his principal subordinate. Hooker had replaced Burnside. Hooker had maneuvered to get rid of Burnside. He wanted to be in command of the army. He had made a statement that he said what the nation needed was a dictator to make sure it won. And Lincoln, one of the best letters a president ever wrote to a military commander, Lincoln wrote to Hooker and he said, basically, "I know everything you're saying. You're talking about all the things you're going to do." And he said that the only way you get to be a dictator is if you have victories. And I'm willing to risk a dictatorship to get victories. And so I know I've got you figured out, Joe. He's saying. And he did. Hooker made a lot of blustery talk. He got a... he had a great start. He built the army into what he called the great... greatest army on the planet, about 135,000 men. Beautifully supplied, reorganized the medical service in it. He did everything that you should do to get an army in shape. And then he started a campaign. His plan, Lee was still at Fredericksburg. He was going to get around Lee's left flank, come in behind him, force Lee to either retreat to Richmond or fight him on unfavorable ground. Everything went well with Hooker. He got going in late April. Until the moment of truth came. The moment of truth came on May 1st, 1863, when Lee, instead of retreating, left part of his army to watch one part of Hooker's and turned around to meet Hooker head-on near a crossroads called Chancellorsville, a few miles west of Fredericksburg. And as soon as the fighting started, McClellan lost his nerve, pulled into a defensive position, and the upshot was after Lee and Jackson carried off a very successful flank attack, although it left Hooker still in a very strong position, Hooker in the end retreated and it was another victory for Lee in a battle he never ever should have won. He was outnumbered two to one, 135,000 to about 64,000. And when the moment of truth came, Joseph Hooker just lost his nerve. I mean, I really do believe that. I had fun working on this book. I wrote a lot of books on campaigns that are very long and detailed. I wanted a short book that would introduce interested readers who didn't really know that much, perhaps, to... There's one of the maps. So, so the different... there's different positions, the different troops' positions. There's Hooker.
Yes, that is the battle played out on May 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. There is the opening of the campaign. See the Rappahannock River, Fredericksburg. The armies are facing each other there. Hooker's plan was to leave part of his army to hold Lee's attention and move the rest up the river, up the Rappahannock, cross the Rappahannock and then the Rapidan and get behind Lee so that Lee would be caught in a vice.
He'd have Hooker in his rear and the anvil of other Union troops at Fredericksburg and he thought that that would force Lee to retreat toward Richmond and that he could then harass him. They get around... they get behind Lee. They do exactly what Hooker wanted to do. He got to Chancellorsville. He had more than 70,000 men at Chancellorsville and Lee doesn't find out till the very end of April what's going on and then he decides to divide his army, leave 10,000 men to watch 40,000 Federals at Fredericksburg and he and Stonewall Jackson head back toward Chancellorsville to meet Hooker and they meet on May the 1st. The fighting starts on May the 1st. Everybody's upbeat in the Army of the Potomac. They've gotten around Lee's flank. They know they're behind him. Everything seems to go very well. Hooker said, "This is it. We've done it. We've done exactly what I wanted to do." And then the fighting starts the next day on May 1st. They march toward that place called Zoan Church. You can see there, it's just a little bit east of Chancellorsville, and the fighting... they collide about 11:00 in the morning. 2:00 that afternoon, Hooker orders a retreat. Everybody retreats back into this wilderness. It's a kind of cutover woodsy area that has very few roads, and he just hunkers down around Chancellorsville, hands the initiative to Lee.
The next day, Jackson and Lee decide to send Jackson all the way around the right flank, and you see the flank march there. They come, they strike a Union Corps that's exposed, commanded by a man named Oliver Otis Howard. Howard University is named after him. He headed the Freedmen's Bureau later in the war. They strike, they crush the 11th Corps, which has a very high German element in it, and there's a lot of ethnic prejudice that comes into play there by the other soldiers. But the day ends up... the day ends up with Lee actually in worse shape than he was before. He's got two divisions over here under Anderson and McLaws on the lower right. He's not even in touch with Jackson's Corps. Jackson was wounded that night by his own men, carried from the field. He died a few days later. And Hooker still, although Hooker's in between these two parts of Lee's army, he's in an ideal position. He's still just thinking about the defensive or on the morning of May 3rd, the two parts of Lee's army fight their way together around the Chancellorsville clearing, and Hooker then retreats toward the north. You have this amazing moment on May the 3rd where Hooker, who's been stunned by an artillery round that hit a pillar he was leaning against at Chancellorsville. He had a concussion, he was vomiting. He retreated to the rear. And as the Union troops retreated from that clearing near Chancellorsville, Lee's army had fought itself together and Lee rode into the middle of his troops and there was this amazing moment when this spontaneous outpouring of emotion on the part of the Confederates. That's the moment when Lee and his men finished this period of bonding this year that was unmatched in the Civil War. See, there's no way Lee should have won this battle. There's one more day of action a little farther to the east but in the end Hooker retreats. He never should have retreated. He was in an impregnable position but he did retreat and Lincoln was absolutely beside himself after this. He just couldn't... Everybody knew what the numbers were. The newspapers had talked about it that Lee had only half as many men as Hooker and once again the Army of the Potomac, the largest and most important army of the Republic has been defeated by this smaller army. It... Lee's sort of legend in the north grew and in the south he became by this point he and his army were the most important national institution in the Confederacy. People looked to them to see whether independent... It's like Washington and the Continental Army during the Revolution. If they're still in the field, there's still a chance for victory. This cemented that position for Lee, this victory at Chancellorsville did in the minds of Confederates and made him a kind of bugaboo to people in the north. They were just thirsty for someone to defeat Lee and capture Richmond.
So this in some sense created the legend of Robert E.
It certainly helps a little. Yes, it did. It went a long way toward doing it. A long way.
You're right about, you know, the difference between sort of reality and memory. How does the north remember this battle and how does the south remember this battle?
