OK...here's the blurb I got in an email.
May 6, 1863, was the final day of the
Battle of Chancellorsville, which ended in a Confederate victory that is often considered General
Robert E. Lee‘s “perfect battle,” as he successfully defeated an army more than twice the size of his own.
In April, Union general
Joseph Hooker—the new commander of the Army of the Potomac—decided to move against Lee, whose Army of Northern Virginia was situated at Fredericksburg, Virginia. Hooker wanted to avoid attacking Fredericksburg head on, as that had proved a disaster
in the past, so he planned to send a third of his army to Fredericksburg to hold Lee there, while his cavalry would cut Lee’s communication lines and the majority of his army would sweep around to outflank Lee from the rear and left.
Hooker’s movement to
Chancellorsville, a crossroads not far from Lee’s left flank, was well-executed, but Lee—although outnumbered more than two to one (roughly 130,000 to 60,000)—left only a small part of his troops at Fredericksburg and
moved the rest under
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson to face Hooker rather than retreat. When Jackson began to push back against Hooker’s vanguard, Hooker lost his nerve and had his troops take up defensive positions in a brushy, difficult area known as the
Wilderness.
Defying conventional military wisdom, Lee and Jackson decided to split the army once again, leaving a portion of troops under Lee to distract Hooker’s front, while Jackson would take the bulk of the troops on a 12-mile march to hit the Union’s exposed
right flank. The gamble
paid off, and on the
evening of May 2, Jackson’s troops caught the Union right by surprise and it crumbled.
The
fighting continued for a few more days, with the most intense occurring on
May 3. Besides fighting around Chancellorsville, there was also fighting at
Fredericksburg and
Salem Church. Eventually, Hooker
retreated across the Rappahannock River, giving the Confederates the
victory, despite heavy
casualties on both sides.
However, although the battle was a Confederate
triumph, the Lee sustained a major loss in the
death of Jackson, one of the best Confederate generals. On the night of the 2nd, Jackson and some others had been returning from scouting Union positions when they were fired on by their own pickets. Jackson was wounded, and his left arm had to be amputated. Complications arose following the surgery, and on May 10, Jackson died of pneumonia.
Lee’s victory at the
Battle of Chancellorsville would give him the necessary momentum for his campaign into the North, where he would face the Union on its home soil at the
Battle of Gettysburg that July.
Do you have ancestors who fought at Chancellorsville? Tell us about them! Or learn more about the battle
on Fold3.