After Wheaton’s brigade was repulsed from the stone wall, Sedgwick tried another flank maneuver, looking to avoid another direct assault on the heights. Brig. Gen. Albion P. Howe’s Second Division was just south of Fredericksburg on the Bowling Green Road, positioned south of Hazel Run. Sedgwick ordered Howe to send a force forward to determine if a flanking attack on Marye’s Heights was possible from that side. Troops from the 77th New York were sent forward as skirmishers and managed to take some Confederate rifle pits ahead of their position, but they were stalled by Hazel Run which proved difficult to cross. Fire from Lee’s Hill and the infantry line at its base pinned the skirmishers in their forward position and kept the rest of Howe’s men under cover at the Bowling Green Road. Howe realized that if he tried to push his men forward and turn them to attack the south end of Marye’s Heights (Willis Hill) his flank would be completely open to the fire, and possibly attack, from Lee’s Hill. 

Furgurson, Ernest B. Chancellorsville, 1863: The Souls of the Brave. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

Gallagher, Gary W. The Battle of Chancellorsville. National Park Civil War Series. Eastern National, 2007.

Parsons, Philip W. The Union Sixth Army Corps in the Chancellorsville Campaign: A Study of the Engagements of Second Fredericksburg, Salem Church and Banks’s Ford, May 3-4, 1863. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006.

Sutherland, Daniel E. Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: The Dare Mark Campaign. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.