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Updated: July 3, 2025
Now think of an old Confederate veteran, who passed through Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness, sitting in front of a cheerful fire in a snug log cabin, reading, say, "The Spectator!" Think of another by his side reading a letter from his sweetheart; and another still, a warm and yearning letter from his mother.
Standing yet upon the little hillock, in the midst of the flowering dogwood, a greater than McLaws overlooked and directed all the grey pieces upon the board before Chancellorsville, played, all day, like a master, a skilfully complicated game. Far in the Wilderness, miles now to the westward, the rolling musketry came to the ears of Stonewall Jackson.
Our defeat at Chancellorsville, last May, tended still further to strengthen foreign belief that the Secessionists were to be the winning party, and that they were competent to do all their own work; but if it had not soon been followed by signal reverses to the Rebel arms, it is certain that the Confederacy would have been acknowledged by most European nations, on the plausible ground that its existence had been established on the battle-field, and that we could not object to the admission of a self-evident fact by foreign sovereigns and statesmen, who were bound to look after the welfare of their own subjects and countrymen, whose interests were greatly concerned with the trade of our Southern country.
In the first three months of 1863, while the army of the Potomac, shattered at Fredericksburg, was being prepared for the fresh attack upon Lee which ended at Chancellorsville, and while Bragg and Rosecrans lay confronting each other in Middle Tennessee, each content that the other was afraid to weaken himself by sending troops to the Mississippi, Grant was occupied in a series of enterprises apparently more cautious than that in which he eventually succeeded, but each in its turn futile.
Yaaaaaiiihh! rang the Wilderness. Several miles to the eastward the large old house of Chancellorsville, set upon rising ground, reflected the sun from its westerly windows. All about it rolled the Wilderness, shadowy beneath the vivid skies. It lay like a sea, touching all the horizon.
Soldiers and ambulances, wagons and cattle, gunners lacking their guns, companies out of regiments, squads out of companies, panic-struck and flying units, shouting officers brandishing swords, horsemen, colour-bearers without colours, others with colours desperately saved, musicians, sutlers, camp followers, ordnance wagons with tearing, maddened horses, soldiers and soldiers and soldiers down, back to the centre at Chancellorsville, roared the blue wave, torn, churned to foam, lashed and shattered, broken against a stone wall back on the centre roared and fell the flanked right!
Lee sat on his horse, motionless, near the Chancellorsville House, his face and figure lit up by the glare of the burning woods, and gave his first attention, even at this exciting moment, to the unfortunates of both sides, wounded, and in danger of being burned to death. While issuing his orders on this subject, a note was brought to him from Jackson, congratulating him upon his victory.
Hooker's right wing had been crushed by the sudden and tremendous stroke of Jackson, but his center had rallied powerfully on Chancellorsville, and instead of a mere defense had been able to attack in the night battle. The fall of Jackson, too, had paralyzed for a time the Southern advance, and Lee, with the slender forces under his immediate eye, had not been able to make any progress.
On June 14, Lincoln telegraphed Hooker: "So far as we can make out here, the enemy have Milroy surrounded at Winchester, and Tyler at Martinsburg If they could hold out a few days, could you help them? If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?"
Waiting till his force was concentrated, until the Second and Third Corps had crossed at United States Ford, and were close to Chancellorsville, it was not till eleven o'clock on the morning of May 1 that he had marched in three great columns towards Fredericksburg.
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