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8 : Chancellorsville B urnside committed a tragic error of judgment in attacking Lee’s strong position at Fredericksburg. It was compounded by a failed attempt to march around Lee’s left and cross the Rappahannock in January, a good move spoiled by unexpected weather that turned the flanking movement into the infamous Mud March. Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker on January 26, 1863, and the Army of the Potomac was rejuvenated by improved living conditions, more frequent furloughs, the introduction of corps badges, and Hooker’s infectious optimism. When the spring brought good campaigning weather to Virginia, the Federals were ready for another try at Lee. Considering the digging that followed the battle of Fredericksburg, this next campaign was sure to involve field fortifications. Hooker devised a plan very similar to Burnside’s flanking movement. Lee had too many earthworks guarding possible crossing sites downstream from Fredericksburg, so Hooker attempted to cross well upstream of the town. He left the First and Sixth Corps at Falmouth to keep Lee occupied and took the rest of his army on a long flanking march. Hooker conceived of his campaign as one of maneuver, not one involving head-on assaults on entrenched positions . If he succeeded in flanking Lee, he hoped the Rebel commander would evacuate the heights at Fredericksburg and retreat southward. Yankee hopes for victory were bolstered by the knowledge that Longstreet had taken two divisions to southeastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina to gather supplies and possibly recapture some occupied towns. Hooker outnumbered Lee with 134,000 men, compared with 40,000 Confederates. The flanking column started out on April 27 and made its way upstream. Meanwhile, the First and Sixth Corps, under Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, crossed the river and established a bridgehead on the open bottomland opposite Hamilton’s Crossing to divert Rebel attention. That same day, April 29, Hooker’s flanking column began to cross the Rapidan River above its junction with the Rappahannock. The several crossings here, including Germanna Ford and United States Ford, had been fortified by the Confederates with artillery emplacements and infantry works, but these defenses were lightly held. The next day, Hooker advanced four corps from the fords to Chancellorsville 175 occupy Chancellorsville, a key crossroads ten miles west of Fredericksburg and four miles south of the junction of the Rapidan and Rappahannock. It was one of the most successful flanking maneuvers of the war. Hooker ordered his men to halt at the crossing so he could take stock of the situation and determine his next move.∞ The Federals were in the eastern area of a region known as the Wilderness , which lay from 200 to 300 feet in elevation on the eastern edge of the Piedmont where it borders the Coastal Plain. Most of the timber had been cut for charcoal production, and the landscape was covered with a dense second growth of small trees and brush. Two roads traversed the Wilderness. Orange Plank Road was paved in many spots with two-inch-thick planks laid on two rows of logs. It forked halfway between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville ; Plank Road curved in a southwesterly direction toward the latter place, while Orange Turnpike went directly west to Chancellorsville. The two roads rejoined here and continued about two miles west before splitting again at Wilderness Church. The turnpike continued northwest to Wilderness Tavern, and Plank Road went southwest to Orange. The Wilderness was a most unwelcome place to fight a battle, for the thick vegetation severely limited visibility and provided few places to deploy artillery.≤ Hooker’s order to halt around Chancellorsville led most of his men to construct some form of field fortification on the night of April 30. Brig. Gen. John W. Geary’s division of the Twelfth Corps simply cut abatis in front of its position for a distance of some 300 feet. The engineers laid out works on other parts of the semicircular line, and the soldiers used axes and shovels to build them. ‘‘To most of us this was an unfamiliar effort,’’ recalled Rice C. Bull of the 123rd New York, a regiment in Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams’s division of the Twelfth Corps. Bull’s unit was relatively new and had not yet been under fire. ‘‘But as farm boys we all knew how to handle both an ax and shovel and by ten that night had a good defense in our front. There was a lot of fallen timber...

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