25. The Most Devastating Surprise Attack of the Civil War
Robert E. Lee’s gamble and defiance of conventional wisdom by dividing his army in the face of a numerically superior enemy – not once, but twice – paid off on May 2nd, 1863. That day, while Confederate cavalry screened his flank to keep the Union force from observing him, Lee had sent his chief subordinate, General Stonewall Jackson, to lead about 28,000 Confederates on a 12-mile roundabout march. It brought Jackson and his men, undetected, to the Army of the Potomac’s right flank near Chancellorsville.
Late that afternoon, Jackson launched a devastating surprise attack against the XI Corps on the Union army’s right flank, just as its men were sitting down for dinner. It caught them completely off guard, and sent them on a panicked rout that soon sowed confusion throughout Hooker’s army. Jackson’s advance was only halted by the fall of darkness. That took the fight out of Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Psychologically defeated and concussed from a shell that struck a post against which he was leaning, Hooker conceded defeat and withdrew. The Battle of Chancellorsville went down as Robert E. Lee’s “perfect battle”, and is taught in military academies to this day.