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Stonewall Jackson Wounded! Civil War Surgeon Maps 11th Corps at Battle of Chancellorsville
Stonewall Jackson Wounded! Civil War Surgeon Maps 11th Corps at Battle of Chancellorsville
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Thomas Jackson
[Chancellorsville, VA], [April 30-May 6, 1863]
Stonewall Jackson Wounded! Civil War Surgeon Maps 11th Corps at Battle of Chancellorsville
Map

An interesting set of maps drawn on a single page by Union Army surgeon Augustus C. Hamlin, illustrating the detailed research he conducted to set the record straight on the events in the early stages of the Battle of Chancellorsville. 1p, 7.5" x 9.875", [Chancellorsville, VA], [April 30-May 6, 1863]. This single sheet includes three maps showing the position of the 11th corps. The first is their position at 6 p.m. on May 3, according to General Oliver O. Howard's official report, filed with Major General Joseph Hooker on May 13, 1863. The second is based on a map in an article by General Darius N. Couch, commander of the 2nd Corps, and the third, comparing their positions on the evening of May 2 and the morning of May 3, is based on a map in Howard's article "The Eleventh Corps at Gettysburg." Exhibits some folds and repaired edge chipping. Fully silked verso. Overall, very good.

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. 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 had been constructed, showing the position of the various bodies of troops at brief intervals of time, to demonstrate the correctness of the narrative." He ultimately included a series of nine colored maps in his book, detailing positions during short intervals of time from the evening of May 2, 1863, basing those maps on the research evident in the offered manuscript.

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 "Stonewall" Jackson's Second Corps with 28,000 men marching west behind the main Confederate force to attack the Union Army's right flank. Although the overall Union commander, Joseph Hooker, instructed Howard to defend against an attack from the west, he failed to do so. Neither men 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 controversy for decades. 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 32 regimental commanders, indicating that it had resisted the Confederate attack.

The rout might have been worse, but 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% of his army that he could not easily replace.

In the 1890s, Surgeon Augustus 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 them against what he considered unjust criticism. In 1893, he published a lengthy account of Jackson's attack on May 2nd in 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…."

Augustus Choate Hamlin (1829-1905) was born in Maine and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1851 and from 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, but spent decades denying it. He later served as medical director under General Franz Siegel 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. In 1896, he published "The Battle of Chancellorsville: The Attack of Stonewall Jackson and His Army…" in defense of Major General Howard's Eleventh Corps.

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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  • Dimensions: 7.5" x 9.875"
  • Medium: Map

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