Tomorrow my son and I are heading up to the Chancellorsville Civil War battlefield. One of his computer science professors this semester is a Civil War buff, assigning as a class project the development of a Civil War game focusing on the Battle of Chancellorsville. He thought it would be beneficial to see the site. Who was I to disagree?
I have been studying the Civil War sporadically since I arrived in Hampton Roads five years ago. The ironclads fought here, and McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign was launched just across the river. This is the cradle of American History, with Jamestown, Willamsburg and Yorktown forming what is called the “Historic Triangle”. Richmond is right up the road, and one could call this area Civil War central, except that honor really belongs a little further up the road, at Fredericksburg / Spotsylvania / Wilderness / Chancellorsville. Thus a trip to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial presents the perfect opportunity to launch my Civil War blog.
The area had the extreme misfortune of lying along a natural defensive line midway between the two capitols, since a primary strategy for both sides was to threaten capture of the other’s capitol. Repeated battles were fought where the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers meet. One of the eeriest images of the Civil War is Union troops of the Overland Campaign lying in the moonlight amongst the skulls and bones of their fallen comrades from the previous year’s engagement in the Wilderness. One national park memorializes the Battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania.
I know what to expect, having been to Gettysburg. Chancellorsville may be thought of as the beginning of Gettysburg, though a victory, the beginning of the end of the Army of Northern Virginia and hence the end of the Confederacy. Overconfident after a brilliant victory at Chancellorsville, Lee drove northward into Pennsylvania and on to his Marye’s Heights, Pickett’s charge. Thus here it is we will start our journey, at the beginning of the end.