Battle of Chancellorsville • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
The “A Missed Opportunity” wayside marker is at Hazel Grove, Stop 9 on the Chancellorsville Battlefield Auto Tour. (see map below)
The marker looks down the clearing toward the Union artillery position at Fairview, less than a mile away.
Text from the marker:
A Missed Opportunity
The morning of May 3rd found the Confederate army heavily outnumbered and dangerously divided. “Stonewall” Jackson’s flank attack the evening before had staggered the Union army but had not irretrievably damaged it. As the day broke, Jackson’s corps, now under J.E.B. Stuart, lay one-half mile to your left; the rest of the army, personally led by Lee, was one mile to your right. Between them lay this large, open plateau known as Hazel Grove.
Hazel Grove was the key to the battlefield. Had Hooker strongly defended the plateau, he could have kept the Confederate army divided and defeated it one piece at a time. But the Union leader had lost the will to fight. Before dawn he ordered his troops to evacuate Hazle Grove and fall back toward Chancellorsville, forfeiting what was perhaps his best chance for victory.
“…The battle was still Hooker’s, had he fought where he stood. But about dawn he made the fatal mistake of [evacuating Hazel Grove.] There has rarely been a more gratuitous gift of a battle-field.”
Col. E. Porter Alexander, CSA
From the caption for the photo at the lower left:
The Hazel Grove clearing as it appeared in the late 1800s.
Location of the Marker
The marker is at Hazel Grove, Stop 9 on the Chancellorsville Battlefield Auto Tour. It is on the west side of Stuart Drive about a third of the way up the hill towards the artillery pieces. (38°18’14.1″N 77°39’05.3″W)
(go to the main Stop 9 page)
(return to the main Chancellorsville Battlefield Auto Tour page)