Showing results for "Chancellorsville"
From Iron for Granite: The Army Career of John Gibbon
On August 28, 1862, a Brigadier General would lead his novice brigade of Mid-Westerners against Stonewall Jackson’s hardened Veterans. The Battle of Brawner Farm saw the ascendency of one of the best known and hardest fighting units in the Army of the Potomac. There have been volumes written about this brigade, from memoirs to modern […]
Read more...Reynolds Reconsidered
Was John Fulton Reynolds a great corps commander? Was Reynolds even a great general? And why do Civil War buffs have such a high regard for an officer who did so little in the Civil War compared to the likes of Stonewall Jackson, George Meade, Robert E. Lee, or Ulysses S. Grant? While these questions […]
Read more...Service in Days Gone By
June 25th will mark the 136th Anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. However, this post is not meant to discuss the tactics, recent archeological findings and conclusions or to analyze the conduct of the senior officers of the Seventh Cavalry. One of the aspects of the Little Bighorn that I find particularly fascinating, […]
Read more...The Wounding of the other “Confederate Steuart”
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Cross Keys. Along with the engagement at Port Republic the following day, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson repulsed two separate Federal forces. This culminated his highly successful Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862. Information about the anniversary and/or events about these two battles can be found here: […]
Read more...“Kill Your Darlings”: Kris White, Phil Kearny, and a Toast to Papa Hemingway
“Kill your darlings,” Hemingway said. He was talking about revision. Sometimes a writer needs to delete something that doesn’t belong or no longer works, or maybe sometimes he has to rewrite it—and that can all be tough to do because, after all, the writer has put so much time into each story, into each sentence, […]
Read more...The New Face of an Old Road
On May 2, Kathleen Logothetis offered a look at the Mountain Road–the location where Stonewall Jackson was accidentally wounded by his own men during the Battle of Chancellorsville. As visitors to Chancellorsville this spring may have noticed, however, the Mountain Road now has a new look….
Read more...“Greatest” of the Greatest?
As part of the research I’m doing on the Chancellorsville battlefield, I’m giving thought tonight about the 149-year-old characterization of Chancellorsville as “Lee’s greatest victory.” I suspect, statistically and situationally, a case could be made for several of Lee’s victories as “the greatest.”
Read more...Remembering May 3
I had the opportunity to speak to a college history class about the battle of Chancellorsville on Thursday. It was May 3, the 149th anniversary of the battle. I began by presenting them with an iconic vision of the fight: Robert E. Lee, astride his horse, Traveler, riding into the clearing around the Chancellorsville mansion, […]
Read more...The Legacy of May 2
“Old Blue Light” got me into this whole thing in the first place. I wouldn’t be writing about the Civil War—wouldn’t be studying it, reading about it, interpreting it, giving tours about it, nothing—if it wasn’t for him. My daughter, now 18, fell in love with Stonewall Jackson when she was four, and we’ve been […]
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