Battle of Chancellorsville Question

Since it is always good to get sage advice from the forum, I would like everyone's opinion on a question about the battle of Chancellorsville. Suppose General "Stonewall" Jackson had not been wounded by friendly fire and had continued his attack under the moonlight as he wanted to do. How would the battle have progressed? Would it be a greater CSA victory, would Jackson have over reached, would the USA rally and crush Jackson's Corps? Your thoughts please.
 
Stuart didn't have much more success the next day when he pressed the attack on the army of the Potomac.

Maybe with the drive and determination Jackson possessed, along with an earlier continuation of the attack, might have succeeded in finally shattering Hooker. But by the end of the first day the attack had pretty much ran its course.
 
Stuart didn't have much more success the next day when he pressed the attack on the army of the Potomac.

Maybe with the drive and determination Jackson possessed, along with an earlier continuation of the attack, might have succeeded in finally shattering Hooker. But by the end of the first day the attack had pretty much ran its course.

Jackson was issuing orders to General A.P. Hill to continue the attack with his division when he was shot. General Stuart cancelled those orders for the night attack. With Jackson unwounded the attack would have went ahead, with what results?
 
I'd Imagine The XI Corps would probably be destroyed. As for any action on the next day though, Union reinforcements would out number Jackson's men. if he did press the assault through the night(a very bad idea in this period)i could see his corps becoming severely disorganized to the point where a strong federal counter attack could create havoc.
 
My problem with this suggestion is that Reynolds' and Meade's corps largely hadn't been engaged at that point. Lee has no reserves. You need a collapse in will in the Union command as well. Hooker fights. Hooker's dies, someone else fights. The South got lucky that he was stunned instead. Sooner or later Lee will have to face two fresh corps...Anyway that's my problem with Lee wins bigger at Chancellorsville - Reynolds and Meade.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
My problem with this suggestion is that Reynolds' and Meade's corps largely hadn't been engaged at that point. Lee has no reserves. You need a collapse in will in the Union command as well. Hooker fights. Hooker's dies, someone else fights. The South got lucky that he was stunned instead. Sooner or later Lee will have to face two fresh corps...Anyway that's my problem with Lee wins bigger at Chancellorsville - Reynolds and Meade.

Agreed. Whatever AH potential the Battle of Chancellorsville has, aside from questions of Jackson's survival and service beyond May 1863, it is that it very easily could have been a decisive, even war-winning, Union victory.
 
Agreed. Whatever AH potential the Battle of Chancellorsville has, aside from questions of Jackson's survival and service beyond May 1863, it is that it very easily could have been a decisive, even war-winning, Union victory.

This is where my AH of the battle would go: Hooker & Butterfield - the geniuses who thought up and executed the planned that surprised and whipped Bobby Lee. Also they dreamt up the first serious battlefield use of telegraph lines, trying to run the forward as the battle progress. It failed but still...
 
Agreed. Whatever AH potential the Battle of Chancellorsville has, aside from questions of Jackson's survival and service beyond May 1863, it is that it very easily could have been a decisive, even war-winning, Union victory.

Yes, I think most are agreed that by the time Stonewall was shot, the ANV had pretty much done its worst. Even Jackson would have struggled to deploy a night attack - and Meade and Reynolds were there as reserves, as others have pointed out.

Chancellorsville WAS a brilliant victory, no question. And the fact that it was a victory largely because of Hooker's loss of nerve and incapacitation doesn't diminish Lee's accomplishment, any more than Darius's flight at Issus diminishes Alexander's.

But if you're looking for a major battle with significant lost opportunity for greater success by Lee, I think you must look mostly at the Seven Days, or possibly the Wilderness.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
But if you're looking for a major battle with significant lost opportunity for greater success by Lee, I think you must look mostly at the Seven Days, or possibly the Wilderness.

Agreed. The Battle of the Wilderness has an enormous amount of untapped AH potential.
 
Agreed. The Battle of the Wilderness has an enormous amount of untapped AH potential.

No question. (Thanks for nothing, Dick Ewell.)

Of course, the problem is that Lee would have sustained such losses in smashing Grant and Meade up, with no real remaining manpower reserves, that he wouldn't be in much of a position to exploit the victory.

At least, not without AK-47's...
 
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