Years after the battle, XI Corps historian Augustus Choate Hamlin, who had been a lieutenant colonel and medical inspector at Chancellorsville, investigated the events of that fateful day. His report was quite different from previously accepted accounts of the XI Corps’ disaster. In his 1896 book, The Battle of Chancellorsville, Hamlin charged that Sickles’ expedition to Catherine Furnace and beyond was the ultimate cause of the rout and the campaign’s failure. Hamlin blamed Sickles because he had persuaded Hooker to allow him to make “the fatal reconnaissance” that isolated the XI Corps and left it without reserves. Hamlin also derided Sickles for his ignorance of Jackson’s location and true intention and for “the absurdity of his expedition.”

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Sickles clearly had failed to respond properly to the situation at hand when he advanced to create his salient. If he really suspected that Lee was attempting to flank Hooker’s line, his proper response would have been to support Howard, not isolate him. He should have realized that Lee was not retreating when Birney was struck by the two enemy brigades at Catherine Furnace. That attack made it clear that there was a strong force of Confederates still massed in force on his left, apart from the marching units–and they were obviously not retreating. Yet Sickles continued to advance, completely disregarding what must have been a flanking column bent on mischief to the west.

By his hasty actions, Sickles succeeded in isolating elements of Hooker’s army (his own and Howard’s) at a time when a united defense was essential. Had Sickles remained next to Howard, along with Barlow’s reserve brigade, he might have been able to bolster that corps and prevent or minimize the ensuing rout. In the end, however, Howard’s corps was decimated, the entire army was endangered, and Sickles’ own corps narrowly escaped destruction.

After its defeat at Chancellorsville, the Army of the Potomac retired to its encampments north of the Rappahannock River across from Fredericksburg. As Hooker and his staff prepared for yet another campaign against him, Lee retained the military initiative and, on June 6, 1863, launched his own ambitious invasion of the North. On June 25, Hooker learned that Lee’s army had crossed the Potomac into Maryland and sent his own army in pursuit. Two days later, however, he resigned his command of the army. Several of Hooker’s corps commanders were among the likely candidates to replace him. The New York Herald touted Sickles as the best man for the job. When Howard heard a rumor that Sickles was being considered, he exclaimed, “If God gives us Sickles to lead us I shall cry with vexation & sorrow and plead to be delivered.”

On June 28, just three days before the largest battle ever fought on American soil, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, former commander of the V Corps, to replace Hooker. On July 1, Lee’s and Meade’s armies collided on the rolling farmlands of Pennsylvania near the small crossroads town of Gettysburg. The first day’s action ended in favor of the Confederates, but as the new day dawned, the Federals were in possession of the high ground. Meade was working furiously to consolidate and solidify his defensive line in anticipation of Lee’s next attack.

Shortly after 6 a.m. on July 2, Meade dispatched a messenger with instructions for Sickles to position his 12,000-man corps along the lower section of Cemetery Ridge, south of Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps. Sickles was to occupy a line that recently had been vacated by Brig. Gen. John Geary’s XII Corps division, place his right on Hancock’s left, and anchor his left on the northern foot of the rocky knoll called Little Round Top.

Sickles acquiesced to the order, but he was not happy. He was on the lowest part of the ridge and felt that the ground would be very difficult to defend. Dissatisfied as he was with the low, wooded nature of his position, he failed to station any troops on Little Round Top, where he could better observe the enemy’s movements and take advantage of higher ground. Sickles later said that he did not think he could stretch his men to reach Little Round Top. He also claimed that he could not discover the exact location and extent of Geary’s sector.

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