In May, 1863, one of the most significant battles in American history, was fought; the Battle of Chancellorsville, in which the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, under General Robert E Lee, defeated the Union Army of the Potomac under General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker.
It was significant for a number of reasons:1-It is significant on a military level for it was an astonishingly stunning victory by Robert E. Lee, against all odds, an American Agincourt, a victory of the few over the many.
If you consider Robert E. Lee an American General, (and how can you not since his father was one of the great military heroes of the Revolutionary War) it was the greatest tactical victory ever achieved by an American General, even above MacArthur’s landing at Inchon. Lee’s victory was an American Cannae, Hannibal’s pitch perfect annihilation of the Roman Army. Lee matched Hannibal in audacity, tactical brilliance, skill and steeliness.
Chancellorsville was Lee’s masterpiece of Generalship, forcing us to rank him with Cromwell, Caesar, Marlborough, Wellington, Alexander, Henry V, the Great Conde.
George B. McClellan was a brilliant creator of armies, organizing and training them. He created and organized the most resilient army since the Roman legions, the Army of the Potomac. However, he was a lousy combat leader. He loved his army too much to use it; Lincoln, as War Lord, fired him twice.
Lee (to whom Lincoln had offered Command of Union forces at the beginning of the Civil War) had, in turn, defeated McClellan, Pope, and Burnside. Yet the Army of the Potomac had maintained its cohesion and fighting spirit.
Lincoln decided to match that fighting spirit with a fighting general, Joseph Hooker, “Fighting Joe”. Hooker decided he needed two things to defeat Lee: a lot of men, and a lot of REAL MEN. His first step was boosting the number of troops in the Army of the Potomac to 120,000 men under arms. He then turned its soldiers into real men by importing massive numbers of whores to service the soldiers while they were in camp- which is why American whores to this day are called “hookers”.
Fighting Joe Hooker led 120,000 American soldiers, fresh from being made into real men by hookers galore, into the field against perhaps 60,000 Confederate soldiers, led by a Bible thumping General Lee, and that Presbyterian fanatic, Thomas Stonewall Jackson,” the blue eyed Presbyterian killer”.
One of the great immutable laws of military campaigning is that you never divide your army when faced with a vastly superior force, for you don’t want to be defeated in detail, one segment overwhelmed at a time.
Lee saw this mass of sexed up soldiers coming at him and did the unthinkable…HE DIVIDED HIS ARMY.
That was an act of audacity, perhaps foolish audacity.
Then Lee did the insane, he divided his Army again, now it was in three parts- it was a stroke of genius.
Lee struck at the sexed up Army of the Potomac from all sides, confusing it, stopping it in its tracks, bewildering it, overwhelming it, defeating it. It was a rout.
Hooker, surrounded by his coterie of hookers, had, seemingly, a nervous breakdown as he confronted the Bible thumpers pouring in from all sides.
His hookers escorted him back to Washington DC in defeat.
Lee went back to reading his Bible, as for Jackson-
2- On a karmic, mystical, Biblical level, the Battle of Chancellorsville is pivotal, for in its immediate aftermath, God tipped his hand, and revealed that he wanted the North to win, and Slavery to end. For in the moonlight, right after the battle, in the glow of the greatest victory ever achieved by Southern Arms, General Thomas Stonewall Jackson was fired on, BY HIS OWN MEN. He was mortally wounded by FRIENDLY FIRE. That irony cannot be coincidence, or a random fluke, or an accident or an unlucky roll of the dice, but can be what it was, an exercise in Divine Will.
In the glow of great victory, the mortally wounded Jackson expired, alerting the living, as he laid dying, that he was crossing the river to rest in the shade of the trees,(his last spoken words), seemingly very content to leave the struggle.
Stonewall had been killed by his own men; his own Southern boys had killed him; killed not by Philistines nor traitors, but his own adoring, worshipful men. The Civil War was rife with Generals being killed in battle, Albert Sidney Johnston, McPherson, Jeb Stuart, Reynolds, Cleburne, Polk, Sedgwick but none were killed by his own men. The Stonewall Jackson Death is so ironic that it is divine. In that one Death, God tipped the balance to the North.
Lee called Jackson his right arm, but Jackson was more than that. He could divine Lee’s genius and carry it out. Jackson was Lee’s muse.
At Gettysburg, Lee could have won the Civil War for the South TWICE. Once , at Cemetery Ridge, if his troops had cut the Baltimore Pike. But they had not pushed forward to cut the pike; they were, supposedly too weary to go further, so they rested. The pike was mere yards away from where the Rebs rested. A living Jackson would have pushed them on, knowing that Lee would have wanted the Pike severed at any cost. Lee also could have won at Gettysburg if his Alabama boys had outflanked Chamberlain at Little Round Top. Jackson, a Classicist and a teacher of ancient military tactics, would have recognized Chamberlain’s Swinging Gate and outflanked it- placing the Confederate Army behind the Army of the Potomac….with no need for Pickett’s Charge.
Had Jackson been on the field at Gettysburg, the South would have won the Civil War, and Martin Luther King would not have been fighting Segregation in 1958 but fighting a never-ending American Slavery.
3- Chancellorsville is seminal in American history for if Fighting Joe Hooker had defeated Lee, he would have overthrown the Federal Government and installed a military dictatorship.
How do we know this?
From Hooker, he told Lincoln, before he assumed command of the Army of The Potomac, that after he defeated Lee, he would march the Army of the Potomac into Washington DC and seize power in a military coup d’état.
Second rate Union Generals seemed to have been obsessed with Caesarism, or Napoleonism. No Confederate General seemed to have schemed to overthrow Jefferson Davis, but overthrowing Lincoln and installing a military dictatorship seems to have been the ambition de jure for Union Commanders.
The Union Generals seemed to have seen themselves as Caesar to Lincoln’s feeble Cicero; themselves as Napoleon to Lincoln’s corrupt Barras, themselves as Cromwell to Lincoln’s decapitated Charles I.
Imagine if you will being there when General Hooker, still reeking from the perfume of his hookers, sits across from President Lincoln, cavalierly informing the President that if he is given command his agenda would be to defeat Lee, end the Rebellion, and then overthrow the Republic.
Lincoln sits there, bemused, as he signs the order giving Hooker command.
Then Lincoln tells Hooker: “If you want power you must defeat Lee first; if you defeat Lee, I will take my chances on saving the Republic with the people. But remember you must defeat Lee first”*
There was no military coup against the Republic because Lee crushed Hooker and his Napoleonic ambitions. Lee’s victory at Chancellorsville may have prolonged the agony of the Union, but it saved the Republic as we now know it.
*From THE BURDEN OF HEAVEN by Gerald Maxey
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