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Map of Chancellorsville and Jackson's Attack Provided to Chronicler of 11th Corps of Battle There
Map of Chancellorsville and Jackson's Attack Provided to Chronicler of 11th Corps of Battle There
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Description:

Civil War

Map of Chancellorsville and Jackson's Attack Provided to Chronicler of 11th Corps at Battle There

 

[CIVIL WAR; AUGUSTUS C. HAMLIN.], M. de Fonvielle and W. [Burchurt?], “Map of the Battle fought near Chancellorsville 1st 2nd 3d May 1863,” hand-drawn and colored map, ca. 1895. 1 p., 11.5" x 7.75". Three areas of edge loss, repaired; very good.

 

This interesting hand-drawn and colored map shows the first and second positions of Union troops, before and after Confederate General Stonewall Jackson’s attack on the Union right flank. It also shows the location of main hospitals, “flying hospitals,” and General Joseph Hooker’s headquarters. It contains the inscription, “pour le colonel Hamelin Inspecteur medical U.S.A. par M. de Fonvielle [et?] W. Burchurt.”

 

Ulric de Fonvielle (1833-1911) was a French political journalist and writer. After volunteering in Giuseppe Garibaldi’s campaign to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1860, de Fonvielle traveled to the United States, where he served as an engineer-topographer in the Army of the Potomac. In November 1862, he made a map of the Battlefield of Second Bull Run for the Army of the Potomac, and this is likely taken from a similar work for the Battle of Chancellorsville.

 

In his quest to get the facts related to the assault on the Union Eleventh Corps by Jackson’s Second Corps, Hamlin consulted with both Union and Confederate officers and soldiers, visited the battlefield three times, and sketched and revised maps many times. In the preface to his published 1896 account, Hamlin wrote, “All accessible maps, official and unofficial, relating to the territory, have been consulted, and with their aid, strengthened with new surveys, a series of new maps has been constructed, showing the position of the various bodies of troops at brief intervals of time, to demonstrate the correctness of the narrative.”

 

Historical Background:
For decades after the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Eleventh Corps of the Army of the Potomac bore the brunt of the blame for the Union Army’s failure to trap and destroy Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s much smaller Army of Northern Virginia. Composed largely of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio regiments with a large number of German and other Central European immigrants, the Eleventh Corps was led by Major General Oliver O. Howard, who had recently replaced Franz Sigel. Nearly a third of the corps had never seen combat. It secured the right flank of the Army of the Potomac on May 1, 1863, a few miles west of Chancellorsville.

In a bold gamble, Lee divided his army in the face of a superior force and sent General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Second Corps with 28,000 men marching west behind the main Confederate force to attack the Union Army’s right flank from the west. Although the overall Union commander of the Army of the Potomac Joseph Hooker instructed Howard to defend against an attack from the west, Howard failed to do so. Neither Hooker nor Howard believed the Confederates could attack through the dense woods to the west.

Jackson’s forces attacked around 5:30 p.m. on May 2, and what happened next became the subject of decades of controversy. Some of the regiments, including the 75th Ohio and Major General Carl Schurz’s division, quickly reoriented to face the attack and resisted for twenty minutes before the overwhelming strength of the Confederate assault forced them to retreat. The corps lost about one quarter of its men, including 12 of 23 regimental commanders, indicating that it had resisted the Confederate attack.

The rout might have been worse, but Confederate General Jackson rode forward to survey the possibility of a night attack under a full moon. As he and his staff officers returned to their lines, Confederates from the 18th North Carolina Infantry mistook them for Union cavalry and fired into the group. Jackson was wounded three times, and his left arm had to be amputated. While recovering, he developed pneumonia and died on May 10. His wounding effectively ended the Confederate attack.

The battle continued the next day, as the Army of Northern Virginia forced the Army of the Potomac to retreat toward the Rappahannock River. Union forces under General John Sedgwick drove Confederate defenders away from nearby Fredericksburg but failed to rejoin Hooker’s main force. By May 6, Hooker had withdrawn over the Rappahannock, and Lee savored his greatest victory, but with the loss of 22 percent of his army that he could not easily replace.

Assigning blame for the embarrassing Union defeat at Chancellorsville began almost immediately. President Lincoln was horrified, and exclaimed, “My God! My God! What will the country say?” For years, Hooker blamed Howard for his loss at Chancellorsville. Anti-German sentiment found a convenient scapegoat among the German and other European soldiers of the Eleventh Corps, and the story gained force from many retellings.

In the 1890s, Surgeon Augustus C. Hamlin of Maine, who was present at the Battle of Chancellorsville as the Medical Director of the Eleventh Corps, decided to set the record straight and defend the Eleventh Corps against what he considered unjust criticism. In 1893, he published a lengthy account of Jackson’s attack on May 2, 1863, in the weekly newspaper The National Tribune. Published in installments between June 22 and August 10, the account was an early version of his 1896 book The Battle of Chancellorsville: The Attack of Stonewall Jackson and His Army upon the Right Flank of the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville, Virginia, on Saturday Afternoon, May 2, 1863.

 


Augustus Choate Hamlin (1829-1905) was born in Maine and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1851 and from the Harvard Medical School in 1855. After spending a year in Europe, he established a medical practice in Bangor, Maine. Hamlin served in the Union Army during the entire civil war, first as an assistant surgeon with the 2nd Maine Infantry, then as a brigade surgeon from April 1862, and as a medical inspector from February 1863. He was haunted by reports that he fled from the 2nd Maine Infantry when it came under fire at the First Battle of Bull Run in the summer of 1861 and spent decades denying it. He served as medical director under General Franz Sigel in northern Virginia. Hamlin was the nephew of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin. After the war, he resumed his medical practice in Bangor and twice served as mayor. In 1866, he wrote and illustrated Martyria; or Andersonville Prison about the notorious Confederate prison in Georgia. From 1882 to 1886, he was the Surgeon-General of Maine. In 1896, he published The Battle of Chancellorsville: The Attack of Stonewall Jackson and His Army upon the Right Flank of the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville, Virginia, on Saturday Afternoon, May 2, 1863, a defense of Major General Oliver O. Howard’s Eleventh Corps. He was also an avid collector of the gemstone tourmaline and wrote several books about it.

 


This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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