Original subtitles

And now came the moment of battle that

tried us severely, not that there was a sign of hesitancy,

or show of poor behavior, but it is terrible to march slowly

into danger, and see and feel that each second your chance

for death is surer than it was the second before.

The desire to break loose, to run,

to fire, to do something, no matter what,

rather than to walk, is almost irresistible.

We were under fire and advancing at a brisk walk,

closed in mass... ten ranks deep.

We were almost as good a target as a barn.

Union Lieutenant John Mead Gould described his

regiment's experience as they marched into battle at

Antietam on September 17, 1862,

which would become the bloodiest single day of combat

in American history.

The battle marked the end of Robert E. Lee's

Maryland Campaign.

Following his victory at the Second Battle of Manassas,

General Lee brought his army across the Potomac and into

Maryland, invading the north.

He wanted to move the conflict out of his beloved Virginia,

and to draw fresh troops from a Maryland that he expected

would greet his men as liberators.

Though Maryland remained with the Union,

it was a slave state.

Many in Maryland were sympathetic

to the southern cause.

Lee believed that these were the men who would join his

army if they were given the chance.

Lee, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis,

also hoped that a successful northern campaign would

encourage the European powers to lend political and military

support to the Confederacy, as well as influence the upcoming

midterm elections in the Union,

putting more Peace Democrats in Congress.

The recent Confederate success at the Second Battle of Bull

Run, or Second Manassas, had some European leaders leaning

toward recognizing the Confederacy as a legitimate

government, and treating with both the CSA and the USA

as two separate nations.

And in the Union, the public was frustrated with

Lincoln's failure to end the war quickly.

A successful invasion, Lee and Davis hoped,

could indeed hasten the end of the war,

but not to the Union's benefit.

Lee believed he would face minimal resistance,

as the Union Army of the Potomac was demoralized by its

loss at Manassas, and would take weeks to reorganize.

Upon reaching Frederick, Maryland,

Lee drew up a Proclamation to the people of Maryland.

It declared that his army had arrived to help them throw off

the "foreign yoke" of oppression by the U.S. government.

But the people of Maryland did not greet Lee with open arms.

Many, if not most, secessionist-leaning

Marylanders had long since gone south and already joined

the Confederate forces.

Those who remained were appalled at the invasion.

Furthermore, Lee's bedraggled, hungry, poorly-clothed army

did not inspire young men to join their cause.

Lee then divided his forces, sending Stonewall Jackson with

about half of the army to capture Harpers Ferry,

seizing the weapons and ammunition stored there and

securing his lines of supply further south.

General Jackson and his thirty thousand troops were able to

overwhelm the twelve thousand Union troops

in place at Harpers Ferry.

The rest of Lee's army moved northwest toward Hagerstown,

Maryland, across South Mountain.

But another of the southern commander's assumptions

proved incorrect.

Rather than taking weeks to reorganize Union forces,

General George McClellan accomplished it in days.

General John Pope was relieved of his command following the

disaster at Second Manassas.

His Army of Virginia was folded into McClellan's Army

of the Potomac.

McClellan's superior organizational skills,

and the love his men had for their "Little Mac",

reinvigorated the northern forces as they marched into

Maryland to head off the invasion.

The Union army moved into Frederick just days after

Lee's army had departed.

Upon learning of the proximity of the Union forces,

Lee sent word to all his commanders to regroup outside

of Sharpsburg, Maryland, near Antietam Creek.

Unfortunately for Lee, McClellan received a copy of

Lee's orders on September 13.

With these in hand, McClellan had an opportunity to take his

larger force and destroy Lee's army in pieces.

But McClellan was ever cautious,

always overestimating the size of his enemies' forces.

He moved slowly, cautiously, and by the time he committed

his troops to battle on September 17,

most of Lee's troops had joined him near Sharpsburg.

The armies fought across open fields and cornfields,

along roads and next to a bridge later named for

Union General Burnside.

Lieutenant Gould described his regiment's experience.

The fire of the enemy became more galling

every step we took, and one man after another fell...

The battle had been terribly severe to us,

engaged as we were at close quarters,

and with troops that had seen so much more fighting

than we had...

...the well aimed bullets of the rebels as they went

zipping past us, killing and wounding our comrades and

sometimes cutting spitefully through our clothes,

made us most nervous, of course...

The Battle at Antietam saw twenty-three

thousand casualties, killed, wounded,

captured, or missing.

A quarter of the Army of the Potomac,

and over thirty-percent of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Over six thousand American soldiers - north and south -

lost their lives on that day of battle.

As historian James M. McPherson notes, American casualties at

Antietam were four times greater than American losses at Normandy

on June 6, 1944.

Despite his losses on the seventeenth,

General Lee and his army stood their ground when dawn broke

on the eighteenth.

They stood facing McClellan's larger army,

which included twenty thousand fresh reserves who had not

fought the previous day, and they prepared

themselves for attack.

But that attack never came.

Eventually, Lee withdrew his forces across the Potomac.

From one perspective, neither side won that bloody battle.

Despite being greatly outnumbered, Robert E. Lee's

superior generalship had allowed his smaller army to

inflict significant damage on the Union forces.

At the same time, General McClellan's hesitancy,

and his decision to hold a third of his army in reserve,

prevented the Army of the Potomac from smashing Lee's

army once and for all.

Although McClellan was able to build a great army for

Lincoln, he was not able to use it.

Lieutenant Charles Brewster, of the Tenth Massachusetts,

was working at a recruiting station in Cambridge when he

learned of the results at Antietam.

He wrote in a letter home to his mother:

I see the news begins to grow less favorable

to our side in the late battles.

At first they were going to "bag the whole Rebel Army",

now they are "driven back into Virginia" which is not the

place to bag them by a long shot.

But though McClellan might have been able to

accomplish far more than he did at Antietam,

it was nonetheless a strategic Union victory.

Lee's army was stopped short.

The northern invasion had failed.

The Army of Northern Virginia returned to Virginia.

The loss at Antietam put a halt to chances of European

recognition of the Confederacy.

Karl Marx, living in London, had been following the

American Civil War closely,

writing numerous articles about it.

In October 1862, stating what many

had already agreed, upon, he wrote:

The short campaign in Maryland has

decided the fate of the American Civil War,

however much the fortune of war may still vacillate

between the opposing parties for a shorter or longer time.

In the elections in November,

although the Peace Democrats would capture more seats than

they had previously held, Lincoln's Republican Party

would maintain control of the House of Representatives.

Combined with the Unionist, who were also committed to

preserving the Union through military means,

they controlled the majority vote.

The Maryland invasion had failed in all of its goals.

But the suffering of Antietam was felt by both sides.

Second Lieutenant B.F. Blakeslee of the

Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers, wrote:

In a room about twelve by twenty feet a

bloody table stood and around it were five surgeons.

A wounded man was laid on the table and it took but a few

seconds for them to decide what to do,

and but a few minutes to do it.

The amputated limbs were thrown out of a window.

In forty-eight hours there were as many as two carts of

loaded amputated legs, feet, arms,

and hands in the pile.

Plenty of men, most of them slightly wounded,

were hard at work carrying the wounded to and fro,

making beds of straw, hauling and cutting wood,

and assisting in a thousand ways.

Antietam looms large in American memory,

not simply because of the long casualty lists,

but because it was the first major battle to be

thoroughly documented by photography.

Photographer Alexander Gardner,

working for noted photographer Matthew Brady,

brought the images of the true horrors of war home to

Americans for the first time.

Brady exhibited these photographs

in his New York gallery.

On October 20, 1862, The New York Times described the

effect these images had on civilians back home.

Mr. Brady has done something to bring home

to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war.

If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards

and along the streets, he has done something very like it.

At the door of his gallery hangs a little placard,

"The Dead of Antietam."

Crowds of people are constantly going

up the stairs...

You will see hushed, reverend groups standing around these

weird copies of carnage, bending down to look in the

pale faces of the dead.

We should scarce choose to be in the gallery,

when one of the women bending over them should recognize a

husband, a son, or a brother in the still,

lifeless lines of bodies, that lie ready

for the gaping trenches.

Those lifeless lines of bodies weighed

on President Lincoln.

But what frustrated him most about the battle at Antietam

was the series of missed opportunities.

Yes, General McClellan had succeeded in stopping

Robert E. Lee's invasion of Maryland.

But General Lee had succeeded in preventing his own army's

destruction at the hands of the Army of the Potomac.

While Lincoln was glad to have the immediate threat removed,

he saw the failure to smash Lee's army after Antietam as a

lost opportunity to end the war.

Lincoln had expected McClellan to follow after Lee,

striking hard while the confederate forces were still

reeling from their losses at Antietam,

and were still far from home.

Lincoln visited McClellan at his headquarters near Antietam

in the first week of October.

At that point, the Army of the Potomac had sat still

for over two weeks.

He urged McClellan then to pursue the enemy quickly,

while the time was right.

But McClellan did not move.

Lincoln followed his visit with telegrams that continued

to push McClellan to take action.

He instructed his General in Chief,

Henry Halleck, to order McClellan to

"Cross the Potomac and give battle."

But McClellan did not move.

Finally, on November 7, Lincoln removed McClellan from

command, replacing him with General Ambrose Burnside.

But though McClellan did not achieve the level of

success that Lincoln believed possible,

the end of the northern invasion and Lee's retreat to

Virginia did give Lincoln the opportunity he needed

for something else.

In the North, abolitionist pressure was building for a

general emancipation of all slaves.

Lincoln knew that he would need a substantial Union

military victory first, or else the move would seem like

an act of desperation, and therefore might draw more

resistance than support in the north.

Lincoln also feared what emancipation efforts would do

to the support of the border states.

On multiple occasions, he met with delegates from these

states, in an attempt to get them to accept some process of

gradual emancipation, whereby the federal government would

financially reimburse slave-owners for their

loss of "property."

But the offer was flatly refused.

Months earlier, Congress was able to force the issue in the

District of Columbia.

In April 1862, about a year after the war began,

Congress abolished slavery in the District,

and compensated former slave owners with payments of three

hundred dollars per slave.

It was the beginning of emancipation in America.

Even in the North, there was resistance to the idea of

large numbers of free blacks intermingling with whites.

White workers feared the competition they might face,

competing against workers whose experience was to labor

without pay.

Racist fears dovetailed with economic ones,

as foes of emancipation warned of black men taking up with

the daughters of white men.

Anti-slavery forces resisted this backlash,

and stressed that emancipation would help the war effort.

Lincoln, as ever, sought to preserve the Union.

As he said:

My paramount object in this struggle

is to save the Union, and is not either to save

or to destroy slavery.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave

I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the

slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some

and leaving others alone I would also do that.

What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because

I believe it helps to save the Union.

And what I forebear I forebear because I do not believe it

would help to save the Union.

I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing

hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe

doing more will help the cause.

But even as he said this,

Lincoln had been making plans to take action on emancipation

using the war powers granted to the Commander-in-Chief.

He just needed that military victory.

Antietam provided that victory,

and on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a proclamation

which declared that all slaves living in states that were in

rebellion as of January 1, 1863, would be free.

Slaves living in the border states of Delaware,

Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were not included in

Lincoln's proclamation, nor were those living in

Confederate States but within areas controlled by the Union.

But this still meant that over three million slaves had been

freed under the law, by the stroke of a pen.

Lincoln said at the time:

I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was

doing right, than I do in signing this paper.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation

changed the political nature of the war.

Before, Lincoln might have accepted the peaceful return

of the confederate states and allowed them to retain their

constitutions and their slaves.

But now, no peace could be made without the south

surrendering its slaves, or the Union

surrendering its states.

While the Army of the Potomac was fighting off

Robert E. Lee's invasion of Maryland in the East,

the Union's Army of the Ohio was battling against a

confederate invasion of Kentucky in the West.

Confederate General Braxton Bragg had led his Army of the

Mississippi into Kentucky in August 1862.

Like Lee, Bragg hoped to draw support from confederate

sympathizers in this border state.

He also sought to draw Union Major General Don Carlos Buell

out of Tennessee.

Buell had reinforced General Grant at Shiloh in April,

and later participated in the month-long siege of Corinth,

Mississippi in May.

He then began a slow march toward Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Bragg found in Kentucky what Lee found in Maryland.

Whatever sympathies the border states might have toward the

Confederacy, they were not enough to deliver Bragg the

men he hoped to recruit.

But Bragg did succeed in drawing Buell

out of Tennessee.

On October 7, Buell's Army of the Ohio clashed with Bragg's

forces at Perryville, Kentucky.

After smaller skirmishes on the seventh,

fighting began in earnest on the eighth.

A Union division assaulted the Confederate line

near Peters Hill.

A Confederate division struck the Union's left flank,

forcing it back.

As more Confederate divisions joined in the assault,

the Union line was forced back.

Some of the Union units were in full rout,

but the commanders were able to stabilize the line,

forcing the confederates to a halt.

John Beatty, who was commissioned as a brigadier

general in the Third Ohio Infantry for his performance

at Perryville, wrote in his journal that day:

Nearly two hundred of my five hundred men now lay dead

and wounded on the little strip of ground over which we fought.

They have long sought for a battle,

and often been disappointed and sore because they failed

to find one; but now, for the first time,

they really realize what a battle is.

They see it is to men what an arctic wind is to autumn

leaves, and are astonished to find that any have outlived

the furious storm of deadly missiles.

The enemy is in the woods before us,

and as the sentinels occasionally exchange shots,

we can see the flash of their guns and hear the whistle of

bullets above our heads.

The two armies are too near to sleep comfortably,

or even safely, so the boys cling to their muskets and

keep ready for action.

It is a long night, but it finally comes to an end.

Union forces took forty-two hundred casualties

at Perryville, and the Confederates took

thirty-two hundred.

As with Antietam, at Perryville the Confederates

could point to their ability to stand up to a larger force

and inflict more casualties than they received.

In truth however, the Battle of Perryville was a tactical

stalemate, and it was a strategic victory for the Union.

As with Lee's Maryland Invasion,

Bragg's Heartland Offensive into Kentucky was shut down,

and his army retreated to Tennessee.

Buell, like McClellan, failed to follow his enemy and strike

quickly in East Tennessee, as Lincoln had wished.

Lincoln removed Buell from command.

The Union's western forces were reorganized and Buell's

Army of the Ohio was folded into the new Department of the

Cumberland, under Major General William Rosecrans.

In the East, General Burnside had replaced

McClellan as the commander of the Army of the Potomac.

Although Burnside had distinguished himself in a few

earlier operations, he did not believe himself ready for

command of the full army.

But when told that the commander would be either him

or his rival, Joe Hooker, he reluctantly accepted the post.

Burnside immediately demonstrated that he was

willing to seek the fights that McClellan would not.

He planned a bold, fast march to Fredericksburg, Virginia.

There he would cross the Rappahannock River and then

advance along the railroad line to Richmond.

He was positioned to get there ahead of Lee,

cutting the rebel general off from his main base

of operations.

The Army of the Potomac set out on November 15,

and within two days Burnside's advance elements reached the

north side of the Rappahannock.

The confederates had long since destroyed the bridges

across the river.

Burnside's plan called for pontoon bridges to be quickly

sent to the front and assembled for the army,

now 120,000 strong, to cross.

This is where Burnside's plan fell apart.

A series of administrative failures delayed the bridges

for seventeen days.

More than enough time for Lee to arrange his forces.

Lee's artillery and infantry were dug in.

Crossing the Rappahannock would be a bloody affair.

Burnside arranged his forces into three "Grand Divisions".

Major General Edwin Sumner commanded the Right Grand

Division, Major General Joseph Hooker the Center,

and Major General William Franklin the Left.

Each Division included two corps of infantry plus cavalry.

Confederate Lieutenant General

James Longstreet later recounted.

On the morning of the 11th of December,

1862, an hour or so before daylight,

the slumbering Confederates were awakened by a solitary

cannon thundering on the heights of Marye's Hill...

the aroused Confederates recognized the signal of the

Washington artillery and knew that the Federal troops were

preparing to cross the Rappahannock...

Until one o'clock this contest lasted,

when the Federals, with angry desperation,

turned their whole force of artillery on the little city,

and sent down from the heights a perfect storm of shot and

shell, crushing the houses with a cyclone of fiery metal.

From our position on the heights,

we saw the batteries hurling an avalanche upon the town

whose only offense was near its edge in a snug

retreat nestled three thousand Confederate hornets that were

stinging the Army of the Potomac into a frenzy...

But in the midst of all this fury,

the little brigade of Mississippians

clung to their work.

At last, when I had everything in readiness,

I sent a peremptory order to Barksdale to withdraw,

which he did, fighting as he retired before the Federals,

who had by that time succeeded in landing a number

of their troops.

Sumner's division secured the town of

Fredericksburg, and then looted it,

smashing whatever they could find in the abandoned homes.

On the thirteenth, Union troops began their attack on

the Confederate line.

On the left, south of the town,

Franklin's Division was stopped short

by Stonewall Jackson's artillery.

On the right, Hooker's Divisions had to cross a

sunken road and a mile of open ground to capture

Marye's Heights.

Longstreet commanded the defense there.

This was just where we had expected attack,

and I was prepared to meet it.

As the troops massed before us,

they were very much annoyed by the fire of our batteries.

The field was literally packed with Federals from the vast

number of troops that had been massed in the town.

From the moment of their appearance began

the most fearful carnage.

With our artillery from the front,

right, and left tearing through their ranks,

the Federals pressed forward with almost invincible

determination, maintaining their steady step and closing

up their broken ranks.

Thus resolutely they marched upon the stone fence behind

which they quietly waited the Confederate brigade

of General Cobb.

As they came within reach of this brigade,

a storm of lead was poured into their advancing ranks and

they were swept away from the field like chaff

before the wind.

Union troops made seven charges at the Marye's

Heights, all resulting in the same terrible result.

When night came to end the dreadful carnage,

and the Federals withdrew, leaving the battle-field

literally heaped with the bodies of their dead.

Before the well-directed fire of Cobb's brigade,

the Federals had fallen like the steady dripping of rain

from the eaves of a house.

Our musketry alone killed and wounded at least 5000;

and these, with the slaughter by the artillery,

left over 7000 killed and wounded before the foot

of Marye's Hill.

The dead were piled sometimes three deep,

and when morning broke, the spectacle that we saw upon the

battle-field was one of the most distressing

I ever witnesses.

Union casualties were staggering.

Almost twelve thousand seven hundred men,

including thirteen hundred killed

and ninety-six hundred wounded.

Lee's Army of Virginia suffered less than

half those losses.

Burnside withdrew his forces across the river,

his advance toward Richmond thwarted.

In the West, General Rosecrans, the new commander of the

Army of the Cumberland, was settled in Nashville.

Despite repeated urging by the War Department,

Rosecrans had refused to move against

Confederate General Bragg.

He took his time reorganizing, resupplying,

and training his men in Nashville.

Finally, the day after Christmas,

1862, Rosecrans marched from the city,

in three columns, seeking the enemy.

Bragg meanwhile was in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

He was struggling against subordinate generals who had

sent a request to Jefferson Davis to have Bragg removed,

and replaced by General Joseph E. Johnston.

Davis determined not to remove Bragg,

but neither did he remove the fractious generals under him.

Rosecrans marched his over eighty-thousand men toward

Murfreesboro, harassed along the way by Confederate

Brigadier General Joseph Wheeler's cavalry.

Rosecrans was forced to leave about half his force along the

way to guard his rear and supply lines

from Wheeler's attacks.

On December 30, Rosecrans found Bragg's army in a strong

position astride Stones River,

blocking the way to Chattanooga.

Rosecrans and Bragg developed identical battle plans,

each planning to envelop the enemy's right flank.

The Confederates seized the initiative,

striking at dawn on December 31.

A Confederate corps, supported by cavalry,

struck the Union right.

They quickly pushed the defending Union troops back.

Meanwhile, Wheeler's cavalry was wreaking havoc.

Transports of wounded soldiers back to Nashville required

heavy escorts, pulling men from the Union line.

The Union's right flank was bent back,

though by afternoon the Confederate assault

had bogged down.

The following day, New Years, both sides sat warily

facing each other.

Bragg believed that Rosecrans was planning a retreat,

which indeed, many of Rosecrans' officers

were advising.

But the Union forces were digging in.

When Bragg attacked the Union left wing on January second,

massed Union artillery stopped them cold,

and Union counterattacks pushed the Confederate

right flank back.

Rosecrans received resupplies and reinforcements

on January third.

Bragg could see now that the Army of the Cumberland wasn't

going to retreat, and would instead continue

to receive fresh troops.

Bragg had only twenty-thousand effectives at this point,

and Rosecrans could soon have more than three times as many.

Bragg withdrew to the south,

and Rosecrans occupied Murfreesboro.

Though the battle had achieved little tactically,

it was a powerful morale boost for the Union.

Lincoln wrote to Rosecrans, "You gave us a hard-earned

victory, which had there been a defeat instead,

the nation could scarcely have lived over."

The Confederate threat to Kentucky and Middle Tennessee

had been halted.

Rosecrans dug massive earthenworks at Murfreesboro,

which served as a Union supply depot until the end

of the war.

Back in the East, Burnside made another,

disastrous attempt on Fredericksburg.

This time his plan was to take advantage of the unusually dry

weather to move his troops a few miles up the Rappahannock

where they could cross at fords.

They set out on January 19th, and continued their progress

over dry, frozen ground on the 20th.

Finally, his army completely mired,

Burnside called a halt to the "mud march."

Not surprisingly, perhaps, Burnside's subordinate

generals, were unhappy with their commander.

As had happened with the Confederate commander Bragg,

Burnside's subordinates took their complaints

to the President.

Furious, Burnside demanded that either he or his

subordinates be removed.

Unlike Jefferson Davis, Lincoln removed the commander.

Burnside was transferred to command

the Department of the Ohio.

Major General Joseph Hooker was given command

of the Army of the Potomac.

Nicknamed "Fighting Joe" by journalists,

he had a reputation for bold action

as a division and corps commander.

John Mead Gould described the change.

Hooker put life into everything -

a very much-needed life it was too -

and his most important act, in a soldier's estimation,

was the providing of good rations...

...from our first arrival at Stafford Court House,

we began to improve in every way.

We had drills and dress parades as often as the

weather would permit.

Inspections by general and staff officers were made more

frequently than ever before; and when they saw anything

worth complimenting, they did it in writing...

Much praise was due McClellan for his success with raw

troops after Bull Run, but Hooker taught old soldiers,

and made a hundred improvements upon an army

which had come to believe it knew everything.

Hooker abolished Burnside's "grand divisions",

returning the army to its former organization of seven

corps, each with about fifteen thousand men.

Hooker also introduced corps badges.

These provided a sense of identity to the men,

and greatly improved the esprit de corps.

Each division within a corps had a variation of that corps'

badge, in a different color.

The badges were worn over their left breast,

or on the left side of their caps.

The Sixth Corps would soon distinguish itself under Major

General John Sedgwick, when they would finally capture the

Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg.

The Ninth Corps was formed by General Burnside,

and it followed him when he was transferred

to the Western Theatre.

Hooker also greatly improved the army's cavalry.

Although the Confederacy had been making excellent use of

cavalry under leaders such as J.E.B. Stuart,

Joseph Wheeler, and Nathan Bedford Forrest,

the Union's cavalry units were usually simply attached to the

infantry corps, and given little role in campaigns.

Hooker created a unified cavalry command,

under General George Stoneman.

As an indication of how this change improved the

Union cavalry, Leonard Jordan, a private with the

Tenth Maine Battalion, later wrote:

...the cavalry of the army of the Potomac had

lately shown much pluck,

and hereafter we were no more to hear the taunt,

"Who ever saw a dead cavalry-man?"

Nor was a squad of cavalry galloping to the rear past

infantry on the march to be assailed by the cry,

"Look out for fun ahead boys, cavalry to the rear!"

Hooker had, as John Mead Gould said,

improved the army in a hundred ways.

Better officer training, better inspections,

better food, better ambulance corps,

better cavalry, and more.

His men were rested, and his army was large.

With almost one hundred thirty-four thousand men,

his army dwarfed whatever forces the Confederacy could

put in front of him.

Lee's sixty-thousand troops occupied the heights south of

the Rappahannock, below Fredericksburg.

They had fortified a fifteen mile line.

To move past Lee's fortifications would require

strategy as well as force.

At the end of April, Hooker made his move.

Three infantry corps, numbering about seventy

thousand men, moved secretly northwest up the Rappahannock,

where they could ford the streams to Lee's north.

Two other corps, with forty thousand men,

were to feign an attack on Fredericksburg,

striking across at the same spot where the Union had met

defeat in December.

These corps were intended to tie down Lee's forces

in Fredericksburg.

At the same time, ten thousand cavalry were sent to raid

behind Lee's rear, cutting his supply lines to Richmond

and diverting his attention.

The campaign began well for Hooker.

By April 30, Hooker had led his seventy thousand infantry

across the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers.

They advanced to Chancellorsville,

a major crossroads nine miles west of Fredericksburg.

They were now in a low, flat, wooded area,

locally known as the Wilderness.

Narrow roads and thick woods limited movement

and visibility.

Meanwhile, another forty thousand Union infantry

demonstrated against Fredericksburg,

holding Confederate attention there.

For once the Union army seemed to have out maneuvered Lee.

The question that remained was,

what would they do now?

Having sent most of his cavalry on that failed mission

to harass Lee's rear, Hooker now had no cavalry to warn him

of General Lee's movements.

And Lee was moving.

While one brigade of cavalry kept Stoneman's cavalry under

surveillance, the rest of the Confederate horseman

under J.E.B. Stuart, had been shadowing Hooker,

and sending information back to Lee.

Lee knew exactly where the bulk of Hooker's forces were,

and their strength.

Confederate Major General Richard Anderson,

whose infantry division were supporting J.E.B. Stuart's

cavalry, fell back to a spot midway between

Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg,

called Tabernacle Church, and began fortifying a line there.

Hooker, having convinced himself that Lee would

retreat, failed to strike early while his forces were in

a superior position.

Abner Doubleday, a Major-General serving under

Hooker later described the events of that campaign:

In the present instance it was simply

suicidal for Hooker to delay action until Anderson had

fortified his lines and Lee had come forward with the main

body to join him.

Hooker should have pressed on immediately

to seize the objective...

but he delayed action all that long night and until eleven

o'clock of the next morning.

When he did make the effort the line he was about to

occupy was well fortified and held by all but one division

and one brigade of Lee's army.

On May 1st, at 11 A.M., Hooker moved out from

Chancellorsville to attack Lee in four columns...

Sickles' corps... were posted in rear of the

Chancellorsville House as a reserve... Stonewall Jackson...

according to his invariable custom to find and fight his

enemy as soon as possible, had moved forward from Tabernacle

Church; so that the two armies encountered each other about

two and half miles from Chancellorsville.

Altogether the general line was a good one;

for there were large open spaces where the artillery

could move and maneuver, and the army were almost out

of the thickets.

But Hooker, perhaps shocked by Lee's failure to

retreat, ordered his troops back to Chancellorsville,

to take defensive positions.

His subordinate officers protested.

They would be surrendering the relatively high ground,

with its superior position for both artillery and infantry,

and withdrawing to the Wilderness where their larger

numbers would be of much less importance.

Despite their protests, the generals obeyed their orders

and fell back to Chancellorsville,

where they assumed a strong defensive position.

Hooker still had about a two to one advantage over Lee in

numbers, and he still expected Lee to retreat toward Richmond.

But Lee had no intention of retreating.

On the night of May first, Lee met with Jackson to plan an

assault on the Union forces.

While they were meeting, the received word from J.E.B.

Stuart regarding the enemy's position.

Jackson at once asked permission to take his

own corps - about 26,000 muskets - make a detour

through the woods to conceal his march from observation,

and fall unexpectedly upon the weak point

referred to by Stuart.

If the Eleventh Corps had prepared for Jackson's

approach by a line properly fortified,

with redoubts on the flanks, the men protected in front by

felled timber and sheltered by breastworks,

with the artillery at the angles,

crossing its fire in front, Jackson's corps would have

been powerless to advance.

Just after five p.m.,

Jackson's forces attacked, screaming their rebel yell and

driving all the animals of the forest before them.

Jackson quickly rolled up the various brigades

of Howard's corps.

Some Union units made a valiant effort,

but they were forced to retreat in a rout.

Jackson pushed the Union right flank back two miles before

sunset, when fresh Union troops

put a halt to the advance.

But Stonewall Jackson's tremendously

impressive military success would be his last.

That night, Jackson and a few other officers rode out ahead

of the Confederate line, looking for weaknesses in the

Union defenses so that the rebels

could press their advantage.

When they rode back to their own lines,

they were mistaken for Union cavalry.

Confederate infantry fired upon them in the confusion,

and Jackson took two bullets in his left arm.

The arm had to be amputated.

While he lay recuperating,

Stonewall Jackson contracted pneumonia.

Eight days later he died.

May 3rd, the day after Jackson's successful attack,

saw fierce fighting both at Chancellorsville

and Fredericksburg.

In the night, Hooker had sent word to Major General John

Sedgwick that his Sixth Corps should push through

Fredericksburg toward Lee's rear.

This meant attacking the trenches and stone wall that

had thrown back Burnside's forces the previous December.

This time, the result was a happier one for the Union.

After being knocked back twice by Jubal Early's division

defending Marye's Heights, Sedgwick's force was

successful on its third attempt.

Back at Chancellorsville, Hooker was presented with

opportunities for his units to strike at Confederate forces,

but for some reason he let those opportunities pass.

Lee's forces consolidated, and set up their artillery to

pound Hooker's men.

Hooker himself was knocked unconscious when a cannonball

struck his tent.

He quickly recovered and ordered a withdrawal,

disappointing officers who wished to counterattack.

In the face of Hooker's inactivity,

Lee took a division the next day to put a stop

to Sedgwick's advance.

Without Sedgwick's force to distract Lee,

Hooker felt his offensive could not go forward.

He called council of war, asking his officers whether

they felt they should withdraw.

A majority of the officers preferred to stay and fight,

but Hooker determined to withdraw nonetheless.

Throughout the night of May 5 and in the early hours of May 6,

Hooker's forces withdrew across the river at U.S. Ford.

Their withdraw frustrated Lee, who had planned another

assault on the Union forces for the morning of the sixth.

Lee had won the day despite being outnumbered

almost two to one.

But victory had come at a high cost.

Of his sixty thousand men involved in the campaign,

over thirteen thousand - twenty-two percent -

were casualties.

And in Jackson, the south lost one of its most able generals.

Union losses were somewhat higher in numbers -

about seventeen thousand -

but were only thirteen percent of their forces.

Given the Confederacy's limited manpower,

it could ill afford those losses.

It was of course a stunning victory for the Confederacy,

and a shocking loss for the Union.

For years afterward, Hooker and his generals would point

fingers at each other, declaring that the battle was

lost because of either Hooker's timidity or his

subordinates' incompetence.

Almost a century and a half later, the U.S.

Army Center of Military History summarized the cause

of Confederate victory at

"AMERICAN MILITARY HISTORY": Actually, Lee's brilliant

and daring maneuvers had defeated only one man -

Hooker - and in no other action of the war did moral superiority

of one general over the other

stand out so clearly as a decisive factor in battle...

Lee was so successful in part because Hooker

made so many mistakes...

Here again was a general who could effectively lead a body

of troops under his own eyes but could not use maps,

reports, and messages to evaluate and control

situations that were beyond his range of vision.

Hooker, not the Army of the Potomac,

lost the battle of Chancellorsville.

The loss hurt morale in the North,

and boosted morale in the South.

In particular, General Robert E. Lee's confidence in his army

had grown so large that Virginia could not contain it.

Believing his men were practically invincible,

he determined to once again take the battle to the North.

And so the Army of Virginia moved from its greatest

triumph, to its greatest defeat. Gettysburg.