On May 1, Gen. Robert E. Lee left Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s division to hold Fredericksburg, while marching with the rest of the army to meet Hooker’s main offensive thrust at Chancellorsville. On May 3, the Union VI Corps under Sedgwick, reinforced by John Gibbon’s II Corps division, having crossed the Rappahannock River, assaulted and carried the Confederate entrenchments on Marye’s Heights. The outnumbered Confederates withdrew and regrouped west and southeast of town.
References
CWSAC Battle Summaries, National Park Service (http://www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/battles/bycampgn.htm)
The Battle of Chancellorsville was a major battle of the American Civil War, fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863.
At the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Union army had done the attacking and met with a bloody and dreadful defeat.
The Battle of Chancellorsville, along with the May, 1864, Battle of the Wilderness fought nearby, formed the basis for Stephen Crane's 1895 novel The Red Badge of Courage.
A near-immediate march by Union troops on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, was halted in the battle of First Bull Run, whereupon they were forced back to Washington, DC by Confederate troops under the command of Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston.
Union forces in the East faced stalemate at the battle of the Wilderness and took large numbers of casualties at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor but Grant was tenacious and kept pressing the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee.
A naval battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia was the first battle in history between steam-powered, iron-armored ships with shell-firing guns.
Feeds |
Contact