Virginia Commonwealth University students learn leadership skills by studying the Battle of Chancellorsville

Date published: 8/17/2006

By CATHY JETT

The Battle of Chancellorsville might have turned out differently if MBA students had been running things instead of generals.

"Stonewall" Jackson would have marched his men into battle early enough to avoid getting shot by his own men after dark. And "Fighting Joe" Hooker wouldn't have forgone his customary swigs of "courage."

Those were among the suggestions that competing teams in Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Business Fast Track Executive MBA class came up with last week during a hands-on lesson in leadership at the Chancellorsville Battlefield Visitor Center.

"What better way to use our own backyard?" said Randy T. Barker, a management professor at the Richmond university.

The daylong class, which included a guided tour of the battlefield where Jackson was wounded, was designed to teach the 42 students such things as team building, time management and how to regroup quickly if their boss gets sick or leaves to take another position.

The class was divided into two groups, handed blue or gray baseball caps and T-shirts, and asked to use prior reading of books on Abraham Lincoln's and Robert E. Lee's leadership styles and their newly acquired information about Chancellorsville to come up with ways they could have improved the battle's outcome.

Chancellorsville was considered Lee's greatest victory, because he daringly split his forces in defiance of military convention and forced Hooker's men to retreat. But the price he paid was high: the death of 13,000 men, including Jackson.

That's one reason the Confederate team decided they'd have asked Jackson to move his troops into position earlier on May 2, 1863, so he wouldn't have to launch into battle against Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard just before dark. If that engagement had ended in daylight, his edgy pickets probably would have recognized him when he returned from reconnoitering the ground ahead.

"If Jackson had lived, it would have lead to less casualties and they might have won at Gettysburg," said Dudley Bowman, a quality assurance analyst with CarMax in Richmond.

Hooker, whose fondness for liquor may have made him an aggressive commander, had stopped drinking when he began the spring 1863 campaign against Lee. The Union team decided that they would have encouraged his former behavior, which might have had the added bonus of making him less dictatorial.

Date published: 8/17/2006