New Union commander ‘Fighting Joe’ Hooker planned to encircle Robert E. Lee at the Virginia crossroads hamlet of Chancellorsville. The plan seemed to be working perfectly, until….
By Al Hemingway

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Early in the evening on April 29, 1863, Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart rode up to the Chancellor farmhouse, a well-known inn 11 miles west of Fredericksburg, Virginia, to confer with fellow Major General Richard H. Anderson and Brigadier General Carnot Posey, who commanded a brigade in Anderson’s division. The trio and their staffs met to discuss the not unexpected news that a large body of Union troops had crossed the Rappahannock River and was threatening to outflank General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

As the eight Chancellor women started to set the evening meal for the group of Confederate officers (all but one family slave had fled to the Yankees across the river), a messenger arrived informing them that the enemy was beginning to cross at United States Ford. As the men were leaving hurriedly to rejoin their respective commands, Stuart, always the ladies’ man, presented Fannie Chancellor with a “little gold dollar” as a remembrance. After the officers had sped away, the women secured the family silverware in their multilayered hoop skirts and hid other family heirlooms about the house from the plundering Federals.

The stage was now set for the battle that the new Union commander, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, had been preparing for since being appointed to his post in January 1863, following the Union debacle at Fredericksburg the previous December. President Abraham Lincoln, having once again decided to replace the leader of the demoralized Army of the Potomac, had opted for Hooker, a veteran of the Peninsula campaign, the Second Battle of Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam and Fredericksburg. Hooker had acquired the nickname “Fighting Joe” while serving in the peninsula. Actually, it was an error caused by an editor’s leaving out a punctuation mark. The article should have read “Still Fighting–Joe Hooker” but was printed as “Fighting Joe Hooker.” Hooker hated the sobriquet, but the nickname stuck. From that day on he was called Fighting Joe Hooker by his troops.

Hooker had assumed command on January 25, 1863, and had immediately set out to reorganize the disheartened Army of the Potomac. He established the first comprehensive intelligence arm of the army under Colonel George H. Sharpe and had Sharpe report directly to him. He granted liberal furloughs and organized his soldiers into corps, with each corps having its own distinctive patch to establish unit pride. He completely changed the cavalry arm of the army as well. Prior to Hooker’s taking command, the mounted units were scattered into regiments. Hooker consolidated them into one corps and placed Brig. Gen. George Stoneman at its head. More than previous Union commanders, Hooker realized the importance of a strong cavalry and wanted to train his horsemen to equal those of Stoneman’s celebrated counterpart, “Jeb” Stuart.

Camped in their winter headquarters on the north side of the Rappahannock at Falmouth, Va., the Federal troops slowly began to regain the self-esteem they had lost at the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg a few months earlier. By April, Hooker felt his men were ready to commence a new offensive against Lee’s battle-hardened Army of Northern Virginia.

As snow fell on Easter Sunday, April 5, President and Mrs. Lincoln, accompanied by politicians, newspaper correspondents and their 10-year-old son, Tad, boarded a train to Falmouth Station to review Hooker’s newly revitalized Army of the Potomac. On April 8, the president watched as the troops paraded past. Lincoln’s “expression was kindly, yet firm and serious, even sad,” noted one Union soldier of XI Corps. “General Hooker beamed with satisfaction and pride,” he continued. “His eyes sparkled with confidence….Such a great army! Thunder and lightning! The Johnnies could never whip this army!”

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