Well obviously, Stuart remains in charge of the Cavalry Corps of North Virginia, in all likelihood Wade Hampton III remains his subordinate and probably won't attain a major command of his own unless Stuart dies or something...
Stuart has always struck me as a bit of a brash figure, far moreso than Hampton. Imagine if Stuart had been in command during the Gettysburg offensive? Without his cavalry, Lee would have been effectively blind perhaps leading to an alternate battle of Gettysburg.
Can you imagine a Gettysburg with the Union holding the high ground? The Confederates would have been slaughtered! It would have been an unmitigated disaster! Lee's army could very well have been crushed and Meade would have been able to waltz into Richmond almost unopposed.
Far from ending the war earlier, Stuart's survival could have very well doomed the Confederacy assuming he acted according to his personality.
Completely agree.
Well, of course, after losing two of his Corps Commanders within two days, Lee had to turn south, at least temporarily, while he reorganized the army. But in the long run, that proved a good decision. The Union Army of the Potomac was too stunned by the drubbing it received at Chancellorsville to recross the Rapidan, and Lee was able to appoint Richard Ewell as Commander of Second Corps and Wade Hampton as commander of the Cavalry Corps. General Lee had briefly thought of splitting the Second Corps into two smaller Corps and putting A.P. Hill in command of a proposed Third Corps, but Wade Hampton persuaded him against it. This prevented a good deal of organizational confusion when the Army of Northern Virginia marched north in June 1863.
Wade Hampton proved an excellent choice for command of the cavalry. One has to shudder to think what might have happened if J.E.B. Stuart had taken the opportunity, as many historians think he might have done, to ride into the rear of the Union Army of the Potomac and allow himself to become separated from the rest of the army, leaving it blind as it marched into enemy territory. Hampton may have been less dashing, but the vital intelligence he brought to Lee was invaluable. Who knows, without it, the Army of Northern Virginia might have blundered into a battle at some little, insignificant town like Mercersburg, or even, as you say, Gettysburg.
As it was, with Hampton's cavalry performing it's intended role to perfection as the eyes of the army, Lee was able to pick his own ground, and inflict another catastrophic defeat on the Army of the Potomac at Camp Hill, just south of Harrisburg, on June 29. Hancock's Charge will forever go down, along with the Charge of the Light Brigade, as one of the crowning moments of military stupidity in the history of mankind. If Stuart had still been in command of the cavalry, it could have been A.P. Hill, or even George Pickett, who ended up with his name attached to such a dubious honor.
Hampton's service in the rest of the campaign was equally distinguished. As we know, the destruction of the Army of the Potomac at Camp Hill left Lee able to roam about free of molestation by Union forces. Hampton's raids secured enough supplies that Lee's army was able to winter on Union soil. In the meantime, a panicked Lincoln Administration ordered General Grant to abandon the siege of Vicksburg and send his army east as quickly as possible. Bad weather prevented Grant from coming to grips with Lee until the spring of 1864, when the two armies fought the climactic battle of the war outside of Pittsburgh. Due to Hampton's superb recon work, Lee was once again able to pick his ground and Grant's army, like that of George Meade the year before, fell before the Confederate guns.
After that Lee put Washington under siege...never really intending to take it, but just to maintain his presence in a highly visible location on Northern soil long enough to either bring British recognition, or Lincoln's defeat in November. As it happened, British recognition came first, then Lincoln's defeat later, and the Confederacy gained it's independence.
If J.E.B. Stuart had still been alive, none of this might have come to pass. So while Chancellorsville certainly looked like a disaster, in the end, it turned out to have been a God-send for the South.