The Battle of Chancellorsville, widely considered Gen. Robert E. Lee's greatest victory, saw the Rebel army under Lee and Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson rout a Yankee force more than twice its size. The Northern defeat would be masked, the Tribune declared, by a "deception practiced by the War Department on the loyal people of the Union."
The action 150 years ago this week took place in Virginia not far from Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside's disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg in December. Gen. Joseph Hooker, the new leader of the Army of the Potomac, had reshaped his command into fighting form and believed he had a plan to crush Lee. The Tribune reported April 30, 1863, that his forces were on the move across the Rappahannock River. And that was when the news stopped.
As Hooker moved to engage the enemy, as Lee split his smaller forces and Jackson executed a gutsy flanking maneuver, as Hooker's army tried to rally before the fierce Southern attack, as Lee kept up the advance despite being outnumbered and Jackson being shot down in a friendly-fire accident, the Tribune kept repeating that Hooker's men had crossed the river and that there was a "rumored battle," promising a "congratulatory address from Gen. Hooker." It reported May 5 that Hooker was in a "strong position."
As previous Civil War Flashbacks have noted, battlefield news was notoriously difficult to come by, rife with rumors and falsehoods, but the censorship and misinformation coming out of Chancellorsville — and passed on to readers by baffled Tribune editors — clearly reached a new low.
On May 6, the same day Hooker retreated back across the Rappahannock, Tribune headlines that reflected confusing and often conflicting news flashes declared: "THE RESULT YET UNDECIDED" and "Important Federal Successes." On May 8, the tone turned more negative, with headlines declaring Hooker's "Army Not Defeated" and "The Rebel Loss Exceeds Ours." But the next day, the news from Hooker's army was "Everything Looking Well," and the paper crowed about the "Splendid Condition of Our Troops." An editorial bemoaned the "mystery still clinging about the theater of war."
Finally, on May 15, the Tribune editorialized: "The best news does not seem to be reserved until the last. Our losses foot up heavily."
A year after the battle, the Tribune decried the deception and replayed for readers the telegraph dispatches received by the Tribune, day by day. Our conclusion: The disaster "was studiously concealed from the people for nearly a week by systematic misrepresentation, at once shameful and improper."