Quote · Lex Fridman Podcast
#499 – Gary Gallagher: American Civil War, Slavery, Lincoln, Grant & Lee
Where this was said
Best and Worst Presidents
At 2:22:02 · chapter starts 2:20:07
Chancellorsville is framed as the key to understanding both Lee's genius and his fatal flaw. Hooker arrived with 135,000 men to Lee's 64,000, executed a near-perfect flanking maneuver, and then stopped. On May 1, 1863, when the fighting started, Hooker ordered a retreat into a defensive position and surrendered the initiative. Lee, with characteristic audacity, divided his army three times in the face of a far more powerful foe, sent Jackson on an 11-mile flank march, and won a battle he had absolutely no business winning. The cost was staggering — 13,000 Confederate casualties versus 17,500 Union in a battle Lee needed to win cheaply. Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men. And the psychological result was that Lee's soldiers came to believe they could not lose to the Army of the Potomac — a belief that made Pickett's Charge possible, if not inevitable.
Lee was outnumbered 2-to-1 at Chancellorsville and still won. When the moment of truth arrived, Union General Hooker simply lost his nerve — pulling back from a winning position and handing Lee a victory that cemented the Confederate general's legend and, likely, led directly to the disaster of Pickett's Charge.
Lee lost roughly 25,000 men at Gettysburg — a third of his army — because at Chancellorsville he had concluded his infantry could do anything he asked. He admitted it himself, writing to both his wife and Jefferson Davis: 'I asked too much of my infantry. All the fault is on me.'
On the third day at Gettysburg, Lee sent 12,500 infantry in Pickett's Charge — a direct frontal assault that failed completely and cost Lee roughly 25,000 total casualties across the battle.
