Life is uncertain. We
can sit around and postulate, prognosticate and speculate all we want but
life has a way of making fools of us.
Ask the 1968 Baltimore Colts. They
awoke on January 12, 1969 assuming they were about to win the Super Bowl and crown
themselves world champions of professional football. Instead, the Colts played
as though they had already been crowned and lost to the New York Jets, 16-7.
The philosophic preparation above
could only lead us to one place: The American Civil War battle of Chancellorsville,
which ended on May 6, 1863.
Confederate General Thomas Jackson,
aka Stonewall Jackson, made a sweeping attack on the Union’s right flank late
in the afternoon of May 2 and routed US General Joseph Hooker’s right. Jackson’s
charge was a dramatic change in fortune, for both sides.
That
successful flank attack might have spelled the beginning of the end for the
Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. That
evening, Jackson was mortally wounded by friendly fire as he scouted the
possibility of pressing the attack into the night to keep the Union army on the
run. Jackson’s command eventually devolved to J.E.B. Stuart, the cavalry
commander, and Stuart did an excellent job the next day of continuing Jackson’s
attack.
That next day, May 3, 1863, Hooker,
the commander of the Army of the Potomac, suffered a head injury when
Confederate artillery fire smashed into a support column on the front porch of
the house where Hooker stood. A chunk of wood exploded from the shattered
column and hit Hooker in his head. Hooker probably suffered a concussion, based
upon his behavior in the following hours. But Hooker did not pass command on to
a subordinate and his army was without a functioning commander for the
remaining hours that day.
You could argue that the chunk of wood
that stuck Hooker cost the Union the battle of Chancellorsville. Hooker, who
did not want command of the Army of the Potomac in the first place, soon lost
it. George Meade took over.
Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern
Virginia won at Chancellorsville by taking chances and then taking advantage of
Jackson’s successful flank attack. But it also lost Jackson, a supremely
talented leader. Stuart returned to his cavalry command after Chancellorsville
and Lee was left with a choice between lesser commanders to replace Jackson.
By now you readers are asking, “What’s the
point?”
Well, see, it’s like this: The
fighting at Chancellorsville led to the fighting two months later at
Gettysburg. Hooker was gone from the Army of the Potomac and Meade was steadfast
in Hooker’s place at Gettysburg.
We’ll never know how Hooker might have
handled the struggle at Gettysburg. We’ll never even know how Hooker might have
commanded the final days at Chancellorsville had he not been knocked out by a
flying chunk of wood. But we do know what Meade did in Hooker’s place and what
Meade did was win the war’s most famous fight.
Lee’s decision, after consultation
with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, to attack through Maryland and into
Pennsylvania in June of 1863 was made in part due to his success at
Chancellorsville. But things were different by then. Lee was probably
overconfident at Gettysburg.
Lee was now attacking Meade instead of
Hooker and the Confederates were without Jackson.
The victory at Chancellorsville might
have cost the Confeds the war.
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