Excerpt from The Campaign of Chancellorsville
The Chancellorsville campaign was altogether the most remarkable conducted by General Lee. While it occupied less than a week in point of time, it included a series of engagements, a number of which might be classed as battles. Some of these were fought independently by detached bodies, on fields widely separated, but all controlled and inspired by one master mind.
Gettysburg was simply a square stand up fight; a race, in the first place between, two hostile forces, each bent on concentration before the other; then a clash, ending with a magnificent assault which failed. And so it was at Fredericksburg, a face to face fight, the Confederates entrenched, and the Federals making the assaults, with disastrous results. Fredericksburg was largely an artillery battle and so was Gettysburg, but Chancellorsville was distinctly a battle of small arms, fought in dense forests, where open spaces could rarely be found for artillery, and where it was impossible for infantry to preserve its alignment. Night attacks alternated with those by day, and were productive of panics and confusion. The odds appeared to be first on one side and then on the other, and again to be evenly balanced. The campaign presented on the whole a greater variety of situations, and more spectacular features than any in which the army of Northern Virginia was ever engaged.
The battle of Chancellorsville was probably the most difficult of all General Lee"s battles, at the same time it was his greatest success. At no time if we except the closing chapter of the war, did he have to face such overwhelming odds.
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