Showing results for "Chancellorsville"

An Emerging Image of General Lee at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville

Stately. That’s the word I probably would have picked ten, maybe even three years ago, to describe Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The visuals that would have come to mind would have been Mort Kunstler paintings. There are times in primary sources that people saw Lee in that type of gentlemanly grandeur, and that image […]

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1863: “Even the birds are seldom heard with their cheerful voices”: A Confederate Reflects Post-Chancellorsville

Though sometimes referred to as Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory, the battle of Chancellorsville resulted in nearly 13,000 Confederate casualties– almost 20% of the Army of Northern Virginia’s strength. As the Confederacy mourned its losses, perhaps mostly famously the death of Stonewall Jackson, Sergeant Lafayette Cooper, of the Georgian Troup Artillery, sat down to write […]

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Chancellorsville: Under Preservation Threat

The battle of Chancellorsville. A defining moment in the American Civil War and U.S. History. As two armies of a divided nation clashed in the dense woods of the Virginian wilderness at the beginning of May 1863. By the end of the fighting, an estimated 30,764 men had fallen—dead, wounded, or missing. On the morning […]

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Wondering in the Chancellorsville Night

Many regimental histories from the post-war era must be studied with a healthy level of suspicion since some writers were prone to exaggeration and self-aggrandizement in their memories, and Major St. Clair Mulholland of the 116th Pennsylvania (Irish Brigade) is no exception. However, a level of historical questioning should not prevent a reader from taking […]

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Chancellorsville on the ECW YouTube page

If you can’t make it to Chancellorsville this week for the 160th anniversary of the battle, perhaps you can at least make it to YouTube. We have some great content there you can check out. For instance: Take a tour of Jackson’s Flank March with Chris Mackowski: Chris talks about the wounding of Stonewall Jackson […]

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A Walk on the “First Day at Chancellorsville” Battlefield on the 160th Anniversary

To commemorate the 160th anniversary of the start of the battle of Fredericksburg, I took a walk today along the hiking trail on the first day’s battlefield. For those who’ve never been able to visit the site, or for those who’d like to do so virtually on this anniversary, I took photos along the way, […]

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Symposium Spotlight: Chancellorsville—”From the place of blood and wrath his soul changed”

Welcome back to our spotlight series, highlighting speakers and topics for our upcoming symposium. Over the coming weeks, we will continue to feature previews of our speaker’s presentations for the 2023 Emerging Civil War Symposium. This week we feature Sarah Kay Bierle’s topic. The battle of Chancellorsville—fought May 1-6, 1863—is often considered Lee’s greatest battlefield […]

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USS Chancellorsville’s Name Shift and the US Navy’s History of Confederate-Named Vessels

In recent years, the US government ordered all service branches to investigate and collate listings of all installations named honoring Confederate leaders, symbols, or events. While many are familiar with the army bases named after Confederate leaders (Forts Bragg, Polk, and A.P. Hill for example), less known are warships that have previously or currently bear […]

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Saving History Saturday: Jackson’s Flank Attack at Chancellorsville

Around 6:00 p.m. on May 2, 1863, Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard, commander of the Union XI heard the sounds of firing on his picket line, followed by wild animals rushing through his headquarters area at Dowdall’s Tavern. Moments later Confederate soldiers came rushing out of the woods, slamming into the suspecting XI Corps. Maj. […]

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