Chancellorsville Do you think the Union army could have held Chancellorsville on May 3rd IF they had not evacuated Hazel Grove?

Could Chancellorsville have been held if Hazel Grove was not evacuated by Sickles' III Corps?


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General JJ

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Jan 24, 2019
I'm rereading Stephen Sears book Chancellorsville right now, and I'm wondering if that crucial bit of high ground had not been evacuated, could the Union have held the Chancellorsville crossroads? I'm sure you guys know more than me, so what do you think?
 
I don't think holding Hazel Grove was crucial. The Army of the Potomac still had a chance after the high ground was surrendered. I can't imagine Lee's army winning an all-out frontal assault against a strongly entrenched position.

As the map shows (I posted earlier on another thread), perhaps the Army of the Potomac's greatest opportunity came while the Confederates were focused on the high ground if Hooker had allowed Meade & Reynolds to attack as they requested. The Army of the Potomac did not have too many opportunities like this during the war.

chancellorsville_map_3a.jpg


A strong attack by Meade's 5th Corps supported by Reynolds's 1st Corps could habe done some real damage to Stuart's command and might have led to a decisive Union victory.
 
I'm rereading Stephen Sears book Chancellorsville right now, and I'm wondering if that crucial bit of high ground had not been evacuated, could the Union have held the Chancellorsville crossroads? I'm sure you guys know more than me, so what do you think?
I think Hooker could have & should have won at Chancellorsville, or better still out of the wilderness, on ground of his choosing. It wasn't the loss of Hazel Grove that cost him the battle, but his sudden, total, loss of hubris. Surrendering Hazel Grove was a gross but not fatal error.

Lee's army was split in two & Hooker had the troops to defeat each bit in detail. But, credit to Lee. A masterful battle. Outstanding. Unbelievable. A magnificent, if pyrrhic victory.
 
I think Hooker could have & should have won at Chancellorsville, or better still out of the wilderness, on ground of his choosing. It wasn't the loss of Hazel Grove that cost him the battle, but his sudden, total, loss of hubris. Surrendering Hazel Grove was a gross but not fatal error.

Lee's army was split in two & Hooker had the troops to defeat each bit in detail. But, credit to Lee. A masterful battle. Outstanding. Unbelievable. A magnificent, if pyrrhic victory.
Oddly, Hooker's only effort to use I Corps was on May 2, when the order to reinforce XI Corps got delayed. After that Reynolds may as well have been in Ohio. Lee got away with murder.
 
With Chancellorsville it is important to look at the geography, especially the water features. Lee had effectively boxed Hooker in by 4th May, using the Hunting Run and Mineral Spring Run as sides of the "box" and capping it at Chancellorsville after he'd destroyed the forces there on the 3rd.

On 1st May, when Lee's forces reach the area, Hooker has 3 Corps (2nd, 11th and 12th) already crossing Mott's Run near Chancellorsville. Lee has no option but to try and push them back beyond it, and launches a desperate frontal assault against the marching columns and forces them back. By the end of the 1st May, Lee has already blocked Hooker's main body's advance. Hooker forms a defensive position on Fairview Hill etc., secures the flanks with 11th corps pushed out right and 5th Corps to the left. Meade with his 5th Corps occupies the ground well, disputing the Mineral Spring Run, but Howard's dispositions are indeed faulty. If he'd have formed a good defensive position around Dowdall's Tavern, using the water features for protection, all would have been fine.

Looking at the position on the 2nd May - Hooker pushed forward strong battleline consisting of the 2nd, 12th and 3rd Corps, anchored on the right by the 3rd on Hazel Grove. It was superbly strong being high ground and with a water line between them and the rebels. Had Lee fed his army frontally into that grinder all would have been well in Hooker's world. However, Jackson of course leads his corps around this line into their rear, where they shatter the 11th Corps. Once this has happened the Hazel Grove position is not viable. Jackson can hit the rear of the line the next day, and Sickles would be sandwiched between virtually the entire rebel army.

Hooker's decision to pull Sickles off Hazel Grove was the only sane decision that could be made. Indeed, the mistake was perhaps to have pushed forward in the first place with the 11th Corps left hanging.

Hooker problem is that he needs to form a line facing west, but the ground available is a valley bottom. It is, of course, smashed. However, by actually facing the enemy Sickles had a better chance.

Essentially, after the flank attack on the 3rd, the situation is not salvagible.
 
Not a big proponent of huge salients in a defensive line of battle. IF they kept Hazel Grove, IF they di d this, IF they did that...
Very few bulges like that worked in the Civil War.

Interesting that Sickles used the withdrawal from the Hazel Grove salient as "evidence" about maintaining the higher ground as his rationale for extending his line and creating another salient at Gettysburg, 2 months later. That didn't work out well either.
 
Interesting that Sickles used the withdrawal from the Hazel Grove salient as "evidence" about maintaining the higher ground as his rationale for extending his line and creating another salient at Gettysburg, 2 months later. That didn't work out well either.
To be fair, if he'd not pushed forward to occupy the high ground, and then been smashed anyway, people might well instead blame him for having such poor pattern recognition as to not notice the exact same thing was happening for the second time in two months.
 
To be fair, if he'd not pushed forward to occupy the high ground, and then been smashed anyway, people might well instead blame him for having such poor pattern recognition as to not notice the exact same thing was happening for the second time in two months.

Yup.

There are always more variables - interconnected variables - than we armchair generals realize, even with perfect hindsight.
Still guilty of it myself, and still love doing it, though...:biggrin:
 
There are always more variables - interconnected variables - than we armchair generals realize, even with perfect hindsight.
I think one of my favourite ones in that context is looking at the times when a commander committed their last reserve and it didn't work (e.g. Napoleon at Waterloo, Lee at Gettysburg). And they're criticized for it... but if they hadn't done that, then they would have been criticized as well! Imagine how history would have treated Napoleon if he'd retreated from Waterloo without throwing in the never-defeated Guard!
 
I simply do not know but I think it was more pertinant that Lee and Jackson had got into the pysche of Hooker and the Union Army. Hooker retreated because of lack of confidence not a lack of men.
 
I simply do not know but I think it was more pertinant that Lee and Jackson had got into the pysche of Hooker and the Union Army. Hooker retreated because of lack of confidence not a lack of men.
The question is really what his alternative would be. Either he stands there, or advances, or retreats, and if he tries to advance he's attacking a river line. Meanwhile 3rd, 12th and 11th Corps have been badly hurt, and 5th Corps has taken damage too, so only really 1st and 2nd Corps are fully combat capable (5th might be but it's more dubious).

At that point if Hooker doesn't retreat he's looking at either a stalemate or attacking over a river when he has not much more force able to fight than the enemy does. You could say that the attempt to bounce the Rappahanock was a failure as of May 1 or 2, and the only reason Hooker stayed over the river for as long as he did was to give 6th Corps a chance.



He starts the campaign with, what, 100,000-odd troops in his main body in 16 divisions. 3rd, 11th and 12th corps (8 divisions) have been mauled and 5th Corps (3 divisions) is dubious, so he can only really rely on 5 divisions in 1st and 2nd Corps (so, very roughly a third of his starting army) - on the order of 33,000 troops. It's actually quite possible that at this point Lee has more men in intact divisions able to fight than Hooker does.

You can't just treat divisions like they're RISK counters. A damaged formation - one that's either been outflanked and forced out of position, or routed, or has made an attack which has been repulsed - has to recover morale and cohesion before it's able to sustain further combat, and Hooker's division to fall back is abandoning a plan which has failed rather than doubling down and wrecking the rest of his army on the far side of a river from being able to recover.
 
It actually occurs to me that the Chancellorsville battle should be a salutatory corrective (another one, with Second Bull Run being the first) to the idea that the Union commander can concern himself with his own plans and should not consider the plans of the enemy.

On two occasions in the space of less than a year a Union commander focuses more on what they're going to do to the enemy than what the enemy is going to do to them, and on two occasions ditto Lee promptly hits them with a massive flank attack that collapses their line.

Pope comes off worse because his army is largely exhausted by the attacks against Stony Ridge, but then gets lucky because there's two whole intact AoP corps to retreat to at Cub Run.
Hooker comes off better because he has more "spare" fighting power and thus Lee doesn't break pretty much his entire army in one go, but at the same time if he does end up shattered he's got no friendly units to form a bulwark behind.

If you stop taking into consideration what Lee could do to you, you're probably going to have a bad day - regardless of whether or not you're also presenting a threat to him. Lee is able to avoid hyperfocusing in on the woes of part of his army, which is articulated well enough on the operational level that he can manoeuvre by wings, and can exploit hanging flanks; counting the Seven Days (where the Union commander did see the blow coming and pulled back) then Chancellorsville makes his third, and he tries it again at Gettysburg.
 
I don't think holding Hazel Grove was crucial. The Army of the Potomac still had a chance after the high ground was surrendered. I can't imagine Lee's army winning an all-out frontal assault against a strongly entrenched position.

As the map shows (I posted earlier on another thread), perhaps the Army of the Potomac's greatest opportunity came while the Confederates were focused on the high ground if Hooker had allowed Meade & Reynolds to attack as they requested. The Army of the Potomac did not have too many opportunities like this during the war.

View attachment 293740

A strong attack by Meade's 5th Corps supported by Reynolds's 1st Corps could habe done some real damage to Stuart's command and might have led to a decisive Union victory.

Doesn't Hooker's like here look like an upside down version of Lee's at Spotsylvania? Granted it is wider with more forces holding it, but if Sickles or Couch break, where exactly is Slocum supposed to go?
 
I think one of my favourite ones in that context is looking at the times when a commander committed their last reserve and it didn't work (e.g. Napoleon at Waterloo, Lee at Gettysburg). And they're criticized for it... but if they hadn't done that, then they would have been criticized as well! Imagine how history would have treated Napoleon if he'd retreated from Waterloo without throwing in the never-defeated Guard!

No one ever said of a defeated commander "At least he still had some troops in reserve".
 
No one ever said of a defeated commander "At least he still had some troops in reserve".
The only really rational way to look at it is to try to really honestly evaluate whether there was a chance of throwing in the last reserves turning the trick - whether they got thrown in or not - and whether what they could have been doing instead would be preferable. Still having unblooded reserves can often let you mitigate the consequences of a lost battle, for example.

With hindsight, we can argue that Napoleon could perhaps have won the overall Waterloo campaign if he'd pulled back on the 18th with his Guards to cover the movement, replanned, and perhaps marched by his left (to pull the Allies further from Prussian territory, perhaps). Or we can argue that, even though throwing in the Guard failed, it was a choice that had a reasonable chance of working - on the grounds that if the British army had been broken (and certainly Wellington thought it was a near run thing) he could have salvaged the campaign.

One has to factor in the random element, too, of course. 80% chances fail one time in five, but the ones that happen to fail are still better choices than the 20% chances that happen to succeed...

In this light I think Lee sending in Pickett's Charge (for example) can be evaluated in terms of risk-reward and what else he was going to do with the troops. It came off badly, but if it had been successful it would not perhaps have looked surprising on the tactical scale (attacking a previously bombarded area of the enemy line with significant strength) while having a significant impact on the campaign; there were no serious consequences beyond the casualties (which were painful); Meade did not make a counterstroke.
You can argue either way.

For Hooker in the late part of Chancellorsville, there is perhaps the opportunity to do some damage, but it would be surprising on the tactical scale (the attack has to go through bad terrain) and there would be serious consequences for failure besides the casualties (as we know Lee was already willing to launch a counterstroke).

Perhaps it might have worked? But the probability-adjusted risk is too high for the reward; going back and trying again another day is a better option.
 
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