Hooker At Chancellorsville: A Failure to Adapt

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Just two months before the tide-turning 1863 Battle of Gettysburg of the American Civil War, the southern Confederacy was riding high. After a string of previous victories, including the Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had decisively beaten the Union Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville. The Northern forces, therefore, needed some assessment and introspection to turn the tide in their favor. Almost immediately, the demoralized army turned its introspection toward its leader, Major General Joseph Hooker and his command during the Battle of Chancellorsville. Accordingly, this paper intends to demonstrate that the mission command carried out by MG Hooker failed in several respects, including his assessment of the situation during the battle, direction of his forces, and his visualization of his area of operations.

As this paper will analyze further, the Battle of Chancellorsville was a tactical defeat for the Army of the Potomac, and Union forces. The battle began with the refreshed Union soldiers of about 134,000 attempting a double envelopment of Lee's forces (of about 60,000) in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, Virginia. After a successful crossing of the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers between 27 and 30 April, 1863, Hooker's army essentially divided into three elements. A corps of Union troops, led by a Major General Sedgwick, was staged as a diversion to the east of Lee's army. The remainder of Hooker's army, except the cavalry corps, executed a wide flanking maneuver about ten miles west of Fredericksburg, near Chancellorsville. Meanwhile, the cavalry proceeded west in a wider flanking movement, and then southeast toward the Confederates' lines of communication south of Fredericksburg.

When ...

... middle of paper ...

...d Fredericksburg and Salem Church, by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D White, x. Savas Beatie, 2013

In Chancellorsville, by Stephen W. Sears, 62-75. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1998.

“Union General Burnside relieved of command,” The History Channel website, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/burnside-relieved-of-command (accessed November 7, 2013).

United States Army. Army Doctrinal Publication 3-0. 2011.

United States Army. Army Doctrinal Publication 5-0. 2012.

United States Army. Army Doctrinal Publication 6-0. 2012.

United States Army. "Command and Control at Chancellorsville." In Field Manual 6-0, 1-21. 2003.

University of Military Intelligence. Grenville M. Dodge and George H. Sharpe: Grant's Intelligence Chiefs in West and East. January 2013. http://www.civilwarsignals.org/pages/spy/pages/grantintel.html (accessed November 4, 2013).

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