In the two-day battle of Chickamauga, 35,000 men were killed, wounded,
or captured. Bragg’s victory, while complete, became hollow when he
failed to pursue the broken and beaten Federal army. The Federals were
able to reorganize and prepare for a new campaign. Grant soon arrived at
Chattanooga and took command of all Federal operations in the West.
Bragg’s Confederates took positions on the major hills overlooking the
city.
From November 23 to 25, the Federals made a series of attacks on Lookout
Mountain, Orchard Knob, and Missionary Ridge. In the end, and for the
first time, Southern soldiers ran in mass panic from a field.
Half-starved Confederate soldiers continued their retreat all the way to
Dalton, Ga. Bragg was finished as a field commander.
1863 IN THE EAST
On the night of March 8, dapper John S. Mosby and his Confederate
partisan rangers attacked Fairfax Court House, Va., only a few miles
from Washington. The most important item bagged at Fairfax by the
Confederates was the garrison commander, Gen. Edwin Stoughton, who was
captured while asleep in bed.
[Illustration: John S. Mosby (the hatless figure fourth from left),
pictured with some of his partisan rangers. The “Gray Ghost” weighed
only 125 pounds.]
From April 29 until May 8, Federal cavalry under Gen. George Stoneman
cut a swath of destruction through Virginia almost to Richmond itself.
Yet Stoneman’s absence from the Army of the Potomac helped Lee win
perhaps his greatest victory. Late in April, Gen. Joseph Hooker started
southward toward Richmond with an army of 133,000 soldiers. His line of
march was through a mass of thick woods and dense undergrowth known as
the Wilderness. There “Stonewall” Jackson delivered a surprise flank
attack at a road junction called Chancellorsville.
Intense fighting lasted three days and extended from Chancellorsville
ten miles eastward to Fredericksburg. Hooker suffered 17,000 losses.
Soon the defeated Federal army was limping up familiar roads toward
Washington.
Over 12,800 Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded at
Chancellorsville. Yet the hardest blow of all was the death of Jackson.
Accidentally shot by his own men, Jackson died of complications on May
10.
Lee’s army soon started on a second invasion of the North. Four reasons
prompted this thrust: (1) Southern hopes that Lee might capture an
important city such as Harrisburg, Baltimore or Washington, relieve the
pressure on Vicksburg in the West, and possibly effect a victorious
peace; (2) the hope too that a great victory on Northern soil might
cause England to offer mediation in the war; (3) the desire to transfer
the war from ravaged Virginia; and (4) the need to acquire supplies for
Confederate soldiers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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