Robert Queen

Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini on some random lake in Tennessee

163 years ago today, Robert E. Lee fought the battle that military academies still call his masterpiece. At Chancellorsville, he was outnumbered more than two to one. Joe Hooker had 130,000 men, the largest army ever assembled on the continent, and he had Lee pinned against the Rappahannock with a plan Lincoln himself approved. Hooker boasted to his officers, “May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.” He had spent the winter rebuilding the Army of the Potomac after Fredericksburg, and he believed he had finally cracked the code. His plan was actually brilliant. Hooker left 40,000 men under Sedgwick at Fredericksburg to fix Lee in place, then marched the rest of his army upriver, crossed the Rappahannock and Rapidan, and came in behind Lee through a tangle of second-growth forest the locals called the Wilderness. By April 30, he had Lee caught in a vise. Lee did the opposite of what was expected. He left 10,000 men under Jubal Early to hold Fredericksburg and marched west to attack Hooker, who outnumbered him three to one on that wing alone. When the two forces met on May 1, Hooker lost his nerve, pulled back into the Wilderness, and went on the defensive. Darius Couch later wrote that Hooker was “a whipped man” before a serious shot had been fired. That night, Lee and Jackson sat on cracker boxes in a clearing and made the decision that would define both their lives. Jeb Stuart had discovered that Hooker’s right flank was hanging in the air, defended by the green XI Corps. Jackson proposed taking his entire corps, 28,000 men, on a 12-mile march around the Union army to hit that flank. Lee asked what he would have left to face Hooker. Jackson said, “The two divisions that you have here.” Lee had 14,000 men against 70,000. He looked at the map and said, “Well, go on.” It was insane. Lee split his already smaller army in the face of a superior enemy, then split it again. Hooker did get reports. Sickles even attacked Jackson’s rear guard. But Hooker convinced himself the Confederates were retreating toward Richmond. At 5:15 PM on May 2, Jackson’s men came howling out of the Wilderness into the Union right. The XI Corps was cooking dinner, rifles stacked. Deer and rabbits ran out of the woods first, then the rebel yell, then 28,000 Confederates in a line two miles wide. Two full Union miles collapsed in under three hours. Only nightfall stopped the rout. Jackson wanted more. He rode forward in the dark with his staff to find a way to cut Hooker off from the river. Returning through the trees, his own 18th North Carolina mistook the horsemen for Union cavalry and fired at point-blank range. Three balls hit Jackson, shattering his left arm. Surgeons amputated it that night. Lee, told the news, said, “He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right.” The fighting continued for three more days. Lee reunited his wings, drove Hooker back across the river, and dealt with Sedgwick at Salem Church. By May 6, Hooker was gone, having lost 17,000 men. Lee had lost 13,000, a much higher percentage of a much smaller army, including the irreplaceable one. Jackson seemed to be recovering. Then pneumonia set in. On May 10, drifting in and out, he gave one last order to an imaginary A.P. Hill, then smiled and said, “Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.” He was 39. Lee won Chancellorsville. He lost the only subordinate who could execute attacks like that one, the man whose foot cavalry could march 30 miles a day and appear where no army was supposed to be. Two months later, Lee marched north without him. At Gettysburg, on the second day, he ordered a flank attack on Cemetery Hill that Jackson would have driven home by sundown. Ewell hesitated. The hill held. The Confederacy never came that close again. Chancellorsville is the victory that won Lee immortality and cost him the war.