By the morning of April 30, the second phase of Federal Major-General Joseph Hooker’s grand offensive had begun. The flanking column of his Army of the Potomac was crossing the Rapidan River and moving through the forbidding Wilderness on its way to Chancellorsville. This was far beyond the left flank of General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, which remained posted in defenses around Fredericksburg to the south and east.
Meanwhile, the Potomac Army’s feinting column held strong positions on the same side of the Rappahannock River as Lee’s army. These Federals were to hold Lee in place while the flanking column attacked from the rear. At the same time, Major-General George Stoneman’s Federal Cavalry Corps was to disrupt the Confederate lines of communication and supply.
Major-General George G. Meade’s Fifth Corps, at the head of the flanking column, resumed its march from the Rapidan at 4 a.m. By 11 a.m., these troops began arriving in the 50-acre clearing around the Chancellor House, the only major building in the hamlet of Chancellorsville. The vanguard of Major-General Alpheus Williams’s Twelfth Corps arrived three hours later, with Major-General Oliver O. Howard’s Eleventh Corps following. Until Hooker came up to join the column, the overall commander was Major-General Henry W. Slocum.
Despite being several hours behind schedule, Hooker had brilliantly moved 75,000 men 30 miles down the south bank of the Rappahannock and 10 miles behind Lee’s Confederates, virtually without detection. Meade enthusiastically greeted Slocum upon his arrival: “This is splendid, Slocum, hurrah for old Joe! We are on Lee’s flank and he does not know it!” It appeared that the Federals were finally poised to trap and destroy Lee’s elusive army.
Meade wanted to keep moving down the road to Fredericksburg, “get out of this wilderness,” and start pounding Lee’s flank with artillery. But Hooker’s chief of staff, Major-General Daniel Butterfield, sent Slocum a message: “The general directs that no advance be made from Chancellorsville until the columns are concentrated. He expects to be at Chancellorsville tonight.” Meade wrote ominously to his wife that night, “We are across the river and have out-manoeuvered the enemy… but are not yet out of the woods.”
Hooker set up headquarters in the two-story Chancellor House around 4:30 p.m., where he wrote to Major-General John Sedgwick, commanding the Sixth Corps within the feinting column outside Fredericksburg. He informed Sedgwick that army headquarters were now at Chancellorsville, and “It is proposed that the army now at that point will assume the initiative tomorrow morning.” If the Confederates appeared to be withdrawing from Fredericksburg, Sedgwick was to advance. “Be observant of your opportunities,” Hooker advised, “and when you strike let it be done to destroy.”
The third part of Hooker’s offensive involved Major-General George Stoneman’s Cavalry Corps riding far behind Confederate lines to cut their communications and supply chain on the railroad. But Hooker received troubling news: “The railroad seems to be busy to-day,” indicating that Stoneman had not done as ordered. Butterfield sent a similar message to Hooker and added, “These dispatches seem to indicate no disturbance to the RR yet.”
But all else was going according to plan, and a New York Herald correspondent reported, “The army of General Hooker is in motion and has been for several days past… He must win or his fall will be, like that of Lucifer, never to rise again.” Hooker had been boldly predicting total victory ever since he took command in January, and now there was “no alternative before him but victory or death–death in the field or death to his reputation as a military leader.”
Rumors began swirling that the Confederates were retreating toward Richmond, but Hooker knew they were false because he received word that the Confederates were still in their defenses behind Fredericksburg. Lee rode to Lee’s Hill, where he had directed the Battle of Fredericksburg in December, and examined the Federal positions outside town. He then concluded, “The main attack will come from above.” Hooker had already stolen four days on Lee, making this the gravest threat that Lee faced since taking command of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Lee summoned Lieutenant-General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, commanding the Second Corps in the Confederate army. Jackson noted the Federal presence outside Fredericksburg and wanted to attack. Lee had another plan in mind. He directed a brigade from Major-General Lafayette McLaws’s division and Major-General Jubal Early’s division from Jackson’s corps to stay at Fredericksburg while the rest of the army set out to confront the flanking column.
Lee informed his superiors at Richmond, “I determined to hold our lines in rear of Fredericksburg with part of the force and endeavor with the rest to drive the enemy back to the Rapidan.” In a desperate gamble that defied military logic, Lee would be leaving just 10,000 men to face the 40,000 Federals at Fredericksburg while his remaining 50,000 troops would meet the 75,000 Federals to the west. Riding west, he could see the Federals crossing the Rapidan beyond the Wilderness ahead. Lee resolved to attack the enemy in the Wilderness, using the dense brush to offset the superior Federal numbers and artillery. The Confederates would move out at dawn.
Hooker’s decision for the advance guard to wait for the rest of the troops meant that the Federals would remain in the Wilderness, just as Lee wanted. But the Federals remained in good spirits, confident that they would advance and gain a long-sought victory the next day. Hooker issued no marching orders for the next day, even though it promised to be the most decisive day of the campaign. Instead, he issued General Order Number 47, to be read in the camps:
“It is with heartfelt satisfaction that the commanding general announces to the army that the operations of the last three days have determined that our enemy must either ingloriously fly, or come out from behind his defenses and give us battle on our own ground, where certain destruction awaits him.”
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