The Battle of Chancellorsville
Thursday, December 26, 2019
General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army is a controversial figure. Although he fought against the U.S. in the American Civil War, he used to be considered a hero for his loyalty to his "country." But today, statues of him are being torn down as honoring a traitor to the U.S.
The son of an officer in the Revolutionary War, and himself trained at West Point, Lee served 32 years in the U.S. Army before the Civil War broke out. When his home state of Virginia seceded and joined the south, he felt duty-bound to switch sides--to the North's great loss.
One of Lee's greatest battles--and at the same time one in which he suffered some of the South's greatest losses--was the Battle of Chancellorsville, which lasted from April 30 to May 6, 1863, right in the middle of the war (which lasted from April, 1861 to May, 1865).
Northern troops under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker had crossed into Virginia to lure Lee into battle, while raiding parties simultaneously attempted to disrupt Lee's supply lines. Unexpectedly, Lee--a master strategist--split his army, leaving a fifth of them to face an anticipated rear assault under Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, and taking four-fifths to face Hooker's frontal assault.
It was a bold move, and went against the advice of Lee's subordinates, as even at full strength his troops seemed no match for Hooker's much larger force. Nevertheless, despite heavy losses, Lee's army won the day. It has been called Lee's "perfect battle," although the fighting on May 3 was the second bloodiest day of the entire Civil War. (The later Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862, was not only the bloodiest day of the war, but also the bloodiest single day in all of American history, with a tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing on both sides.)
But in the process of winning at Chancellorsville, Lee lost Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, one of his best men, to "friendly fire." Some 1,665 of Lee's 12,764 men were killed, 9,081 more wounded, and 2,018 captured or missing. Thus, in many ways, Lee's "perfect battle" was also a "Pyrrhic victory."