The Battle of Perryville

The battle of Perryville occured on October 8, 1862 and was located in Kentucky. The Battle of Perryville, also known as the Battle of Chaplin Hills, was fought on October 8, 1862, in the Chaplin Hills west of Perryville, Kentucky, as the culmination of the Confederate Heartland Offensive (Kentucky Campaign) during the American Civil War. Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg's Army of Mississippi[5] won a tactical victory against primarily a single corps of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Union Army of the Ohio. The battle is considered a strategic Union victory, sometimes called the Battle for Kentucky, because Bragg withdrew to Tennessee soon thereafter, leaving the critical border state of Kentucky in Union hands for the remainder of the war.
On October 7, Buell's army, in pursuit of Bragg, converged on the small crossroads town of Perryville in three columns. Union forces first skirmished with Confederate cavalry on the Springfield Pike before the fighting became more general, on Peters Hill, as the Confederate infantry arrived, both sides desperate to get access to fresh water. The next day, at dawn, fighting began again around Peters Hill as a Union division advanced up the pike, halting just before the Confederate line. After noon, a Confederate division struck the Union left flank—the I Corps of Maj. Gen. Alexander M. McCook—and forced it to fall back. When more Confederate divisions joined the fray, the Union line made a stubborn stand, counterattacked, but finally fell back with some troops routed. Buell, a couple of miles behind the action, was not aware that a battle was taking place and did not send any reserves to the front until late in the afternoon. The Union troops on the left flank, reinforced by two brigades, stabilized their line, and the Confederate attack sputtered to a halt. Later, three Confederate regiments assaulted the Union division on the Springfield Pike but were repulsed and fell back into Perryville. Union troops pursued, and skirmishing occurred in the streets in the evening before dark. By that time, Union reinforcements were threatening the Confederate left flank. Bragg, short of men and supplies, withdrew during the night, and continued the Confederate retrograde by way of Cumberland Gap into East Tennessee. Considering the casualties for the engaged strengths of the armies, the Battle of Perryville was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, and the largest battle fought in the state of Kentucky. There was no winner of this battle. It was a draw.

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The Battle of Utoy Creek

The battle of Utoy Creek occured on the dates August 5-7, 1864 and was located in Georgia. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's Union armies had partially encircled the city of Atlanta, Georgia, which was being held by Confederate forces under the command of Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood. Sherman had at this point adopted a strategy of attacking the railroad lines into Atlanta, hoping to cut off his enemies' supplies.
After failing to envelop Hood's left flank at the Battle of Ezra Church, Sherman still wanted to extend his right flank to hit the railroad between East Point and Atlanta. He transferred Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield's Army of the Ohio from his left to his right flank and sent him to the north bank of Utoy Creek. Although Schofield’s troops were at Utoy Creek on August 2, they, along with the XIV Corps, Army of the Cumberland, did not cross until August 4. Schofield's force began its movement to exploit this situation on the morning of August 5. Although initially successful, Schofield had to regroup his forces, which took the rest of the day. The delay allowed the Confederates to strengthen their defenses with abatis, which slowed the Union attack when it restarted on the morning of August 6. The Federals were repulsed with heavy losses by William B. Bate's division and failed in an attempt to break the railroad. On August 7, the Union troops moved toward the Confederate main line and entrenched. Here they remained until late August. The winner of this battle was the Union army.

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The Battle of Pea Ridge

The battle of Pea Ridge occured on March 7 and March 8, 1862 and was located in Arkansas. Union forces in Missouri during the latter part of 1861 and early 1862 had effectively pushed Confederate forces out of the state. By the spring of 1862, Union Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis determined to pursue the Confederates back into Arkansas with his Army of the Southwest.
Curtis moved his approximately 10,500 Union soldiers and 50 artillery pieces into Benton County, Arkansas, along a small stream called Sugar Creek. Union forces consisted primarily of soldiers from Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio. Over half of the Federal soldiers were German immigrants.
Curtis found an excellent defensive position on the north side of the creek and proceeded to fortify it and place artillery for an expected Confederate assault from the south. Confederate Major General Earl Van Dorn had been appointed overall commander of the Trans-Mississippi District to quell a simmering conflict between competing generals Sterling Price of Missouri and Benjamin McCulloch of Texas. Van Dorn's Army of the West totaled approximately 16,000 men, including 800 Cherokee Indian troops, contingents from the Missouri State Guard, Confederate cavalry, infantry and artillery from Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri.
Van Dorn was aware of the Union movements into Arkansas and was intent on destroying Curtis's Army of the Southwest and reopening the gateway into Missouri. Van Dorn had planned for both of his divisions to reach Cross Timber Hollow, but by dawn, only the head of Price's division had made it that far. Because of the delay, the Confederate army commander instructed McCulloch's division to take the Ford Road from Twelve Corner Church and meet Price at Elkhorn.
Federal patrols detected both threats on the morning of March 7. Not knowing where the Confederate main body was located, Curtis reacted by sending Dodge's brigade of Col. Eugene A. Carr's 4th Division northeast up the Wire Road to join the 24th Missouri Infantry at Elkhorn Tavern. Luckily for Curtis, Dodge, still worried about the threat to the Union rear, had disobeyed orders and pulled his brigade back to Pratt's Store. This made it immediately available to reinforce Elkhorn. Curtis also sent a task force under the command of Col. Peter J. Osterhaus north to reconnoiter along Ford Road. Osterhaus' force consisted of Col. Nicholas Greusel's brigade of his own 1st Division, several cavalry units led by Col. Cyrus Bussey and 12 cannons. McCulloch's force consisted of a brigade of cavalry under General James McIntosh, a brigade of infantry under Col. Louis Hébert, and a brigade of Cherokee under Brigadier General Albert Pike. McCulloch's troops swung west on the Ford Road and plowed into elements of the Federal Army at a small village named Leetown, where a fierce firefight erupted.
McCulloch and McIntosh were killed in action soon after the clash began, and Colonel Hébert was captured. These events effectively shattered the Confederate command structure, and they were unable to organize an effective attack in the resulting chaos. At 11:30 am Osterhaus rode north through a belt of timber onto Foster Farm and witnessed an astonishing sight. McCulloch's entire division was marching east on Ford Road only a few hundred yards away.[6] In spite of the ridiculous odds, Osterhaus ordered Bussey's small force to attack in order to buy time for his infantry brigade to deploy. Three Federal cannon began shelling the Southerners, killing at least ten men. McCulloch wheeled McIntosh's 3,000 horsemen to the south and ordered them to attack. The massed Confederate charge simply mobbed the Yankees. They stampeded Bussey's force and captured all three cannons. A little further west, two companies of the 3rd Iowa ran into a Cherokee ambush and were similarly routed. The Iowa unit's unusual killed-to-wounded ratio, 24 killed and 17 wounded, suggests that the native American warriors killed a number of wounded Northerners. "Some, perhaps all, of Trimble's wounded Iowans were murdered and at least eight were scalped."[7]
South of the belt of timber lay Oberson's Field. Greusel had time to form his brigade and nine cannon on the edge of the forest on the south side of Oberson's Field. Sul Ross alertly led the 6th Texas Cavalry in pursuit of Bussey's force. But when Ross rode into the field, his men were fired on and quickly fell back. Greusel shook out two companies of skirmishers from the 36th Illinois and posted them along the southern edge of the belt of timber between Oberson's and Foster's fields. The Federal gunners began lobbing shells over the belt of timber. Though the howitzers were fired blindly, their first shellbursts panicked the Cherokees, who rapidly retreated and could not be rallied. Meanwhile, McCulloch had formed Louis Hébert's 4,000-man infantry brigade across a wide front and sent them south. Hébert took control of the four regiments east of the north-south Leetown Road, while McCulloch took charge of the four regiments west of the road.
The Texan general rode forward into the belt of timber to personally reconnoiter the Federal positions. While in the belt of timber he rode into range of the Illinois skirmishers and was shot through the heart. McIntosh was quickly notified that he was in command. But, fearing that the death of their popular leader would dishearten his soldiers, McCulloch's staff made the unwise decision not to share the bad news with many of the subordinate officers.
Without consulting Hébert, or anyone else, McIntosh impulsively led his former regiment, the dismounted 2nd Arkansas Mounted Rifles Regiment into the attack. As the unit reached the southern edge of the belt of timber, it was met with a massed volley from Greusel's brigade and McIntosh dropped dead with a bullet in him. In the meantime, unaware that he was now in command of the division, Hébert led the left wing of the attack south into the woods.
Meanwhile, the colonels of the right wing regiments, showing no initiative, decided to pull back and wait for orders from Hébert. It was about 2:00 pm. The blind Federal bombardment of Foster's Farm and the breakdown in the Confederate command structure began to destroy the morale of McCulloch's division.
Hébert's powerful attack was stopped in the nick of time by Col. Jefferson C. Davis and the 3rd Division. Davis was originally destined for Elkhorn, but Curtis diverted his troops to Leetown after Osterhaus' report reached him. The four Southern regiments nearly overran Davis' leading brigade under Col. Julius White. Davis ordered a cavalry battalion to charge, but this effort was easily routed by the Southern infantry. When Col. Thomas Pattison's brigade arrived, Davis sent them up a forest trail to envelop Hébert's open left flank. Untroubled by the inert Confederate units on Foster's Farm, Osterhaus was able to "box in" Hébert's right flank.[8] After very hard fighting in dense woods, the Confederates, pressed from three sides, were driven back to the Ford Road. In the smoky confusion, Hébert and a small party, having become separated from the rest of the left wing, blundered through a gap in the Union lines and got lost in the woods. Later that day, a Federal cavalry unit captured Hébert and his group.
At this point, command of McCulloch's division would normally have devolved upon Elkanah Greer, the commander of the 3rd Texas Cavalry Regiment, but due to the prevailing command confusion, he was not notified of his superior officers' death or capture for several hours. In the meantime, Brigadier General Albert Pike, technically outside the chain of command of McCulloch's division assumed command on the Leetown battlefield around 3:00 pm. At 3:30 pm, even as Hébert was still battling in the woods, Pike decided to lead the regiments nearest to him in retreat back to Twelve Corners Church. This movement took place in total confusion, several units being left behind on the field, some marching back towards Camp Stephens, others around Big Mountain towards Van Dorn and the rest of the army. At least one regiment was at this point ordered to discard its arms and bury them for later recovery. Only several hours later, Greer assumed command of the remaining forces and was at that point informed of Pike's actions. Initially, he considered remaining on the battle field but after consulting with Van Dorn decided to withdraw his forces as well and join the remainder of the army in Cross Timber Hollow. On the other side of Pea Ridge, Van Dorn and Price encountered the Federals near Elkhorn Tavern. Van Dorn ordered an attack, and by nightfall the Confederates succeeded in pushing the Union forces back. They seized the Telegraph and Huntsville Roads and succeeded in cutting Curtis's lines of communication at Elkhorn Tavern. The survivors from McCulloch's command joined Van Dorn at the tavern during the night. Around 9:30 am, Cearnal's cavalry battalion in Price's advance guard bumped into a company of the 24th Missouri in Cross Timber Hollow. Soon after, Carr arrived at Elkhorn with Dodge's brigade right behind. Carr spread out his regiments facing north along the edge of the plateau near the tavern and pulled the 24th Missouri back to cover their left flank at the base of Big Mountain. The Union 4th Division commander then sent the 1st Iowa Battery's four guns forward to slow the Confederate advance.
At this point, Van Dorn made a big mistake. Instead of rushing Carr's badly outnumbered force with all 5,000 of his available soldiers, he became cautious and ordered Price to fully deploy his division. When the Northern guns began firing, Van Dorn ordered his own artillery into action. Soon, 21 Southern guns were pounding the Iowa cannoneers. By the time Price's infantry finally began edging uphill toward the Yankee guns, they met Carr's men advancing downhill in an aggressive counterstroke. The Confederate advance stalled near Elkhorn, but Price's left flank units were marching up Williams Hollow further to the east. Once this force reached the plateau, Carr's right flank would be turned.
By 12:30 pm, Carr's second brigade, Vandever's, arrived at Elkhorn. The Union division commander immediately launched this unit in a counterattack on Price's right flank. Superior numbers of Southerners eventually forced Vandever to pull back a short distance uphill. At 2:00 pm Van Dorn found out that McCulloch's division would not be meeting Price's at Elkhorn. At this time, Henry Little, on his own initiative, waved his 1st Missouri Brigade forward and the Rebel advance began to roll uphill. These events finally convinced Van Dorn to take more aggressive action.[9] Price was wounded but remained in charge of his left wing while Van Dorn took tactical control of the Confederate right wing. But more time was lost in reorganizing Price's division to attack. Meanwhile, Curtis was rushing small units to Carr's assistance as quickly as he could.
When Price's left finally emerged from Williams Hollow and attacked about 4:30 pm, Carr's line was outflanked. On the right, Dodge's brigade collapsed after putting up a terrific fight at Clemon's farm. On the left, in equally hard fighting, Vandever's men were steadily pushed back to the tavern and beyond. In the center, Little led his men forward into the teeth of Federal artillery. After being forced back from position after position, Vandever's men finally halted the Confederate drive at Ruddick's field, over a quarter mile south of the tavern. There they were joined by Dodge's men, part of Alexander S. Asboth's 2nd Division and Curtis. At 6:30 pm, Curtis launched a brief counter-attack, but soon recalled his men in the dark. Temperatures fell rapidly after dark, making a very uncomfortable night for the men of both armies. Curtis called Davis' 3rd Division to Ruddick's field during the night. When Davis arrived he was put in line to the left of Carr. Sigel marched the 1st and 2nd Divisions in circles all night but finally had them camp near Pratt's Store. Asboth, who was wounded in the last action of the day, lost his nerve and pressed Curtis to retreat. Though his army was now cut off from Missouri, Curtis would have none of it and confidently predicted victory in the morning.
A number of regiments and artillery batteries from McCulloch's Division, led by Greer, reached Van Dorn via the Bentonville Detour and Cross Timber Hollow by a night march. Van Dorn did not yet realize that a mistaken order had caused his supply train to turn around and return to Camp Stephens during the previous afternoon and evening. In the morning, the Confederate reserve artillery ammunition would be hopelessly out of reach. On the morning of March 8, Curtis massed his artillery near the tavern and launched a counterattack in an attempt to recover his supply lines. Leading the attack was Curtis's second-in-command, Franz Sigel. The massed artillery, combined with cavalry and infantry attacks, began to crumple the Confederate lines. By noon, Van Dorn realized that he was low on ammunition and that his supply trains were miles away with no hope of arriving in time to resupply his men. Despite outnumbering his opponent, Van Dorn withdrew down the Huntsville Road. In the early morning, Sigel sent Osterhaus to scout the open prairie to the west of Elkhorn. The colonel discovered a knoll that promised to make an excellent artillery position and reported it to Sigel. Osterhaus also suggested that the 1st and 2nd Divisions simply march up the Telegraph Road and deploy on Davis' left, rather than retrace the muddled route of the previous evening. Sigel agreed with this good advice and his small corps was put into motion.
In the meantime, Davis ordered an Illinois battery to fire a few salvoes into the woods opposite his position. This provoked a sharp Confederate reaction. Three Southern batteries opened fire, causing two Federal batteries to retreat and Davis to pull his men out of the open and back into the woods. This was followed by a Confederate probe which was quickly driven back.
Soon Sigel's men extended in a long line to the left of Davis. By 8:00 am, Asboth's small division took its place on the far left, then came Osterhaus, Davis and Carr. Curtis' line faced generally north. Sigel now massed 21 cannon on the open knoll to the west of Elkhorn. With Sigel in personal control, the Federal artillery began an extremely effective fire against the 12 Southern guns opposed to them. When the Confederate gunners pulled back under the deadly fire, Van Dorn ordered two batteries to take their place. After one of the new batteries panicked and fled, Van Dorn put its commander under arrest. But the Southern commander was unable to counter Sigel's devastating fire. Return fire from the Confederate artillery was ineffective and few Federals were killed.
With the opposing guns rendered nearly harmless, Sigel directed his gunners to fire into the woods at the Confederate infantry. Near the base of Big Mountain the projectiles created a deadly combination of rock shrapnel and wood splinters, driving the 2nd Missouri Brigade from its positions. "It was one of the few times in the Civil War when a preparatory artillery barrage effectively softened up an enemy position and paved the way for an infantry assault."[10] During the bombardment, Sigel's infantry edged forward so that by 9:30 am his divisions had executed a right wheel and faced to the northeast.
By this time Van Dorn found that his reserve artillery ammunition was with the wagon train, a six hour march away. The Southern commander bitterly realized that he had no hope of victory and decided to retreat via the Huntsville Road. This route led east from the tavern, then turned south. With Price disabled by his wound, Van Dorn's army began to move toward the Huntsville Road in some confusion.
At 10:30 am, Sigel sent his two divisions forward into the attack. On the far left, Asboth's regiments drove the 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles from the point of Big Mountain. Osterhaus was resisted by Little's 1st Missouri Brigade. Soon, Curtis ordered Davis to attack in the center. Not realizing that the Confederate army was retreating past his right flank, Curtis held Carr's mauled division in position on the right.
Van Dorn joined the retreat about 11:00 am. Sometime around noon, Sigel's soldiers met Davis' men near Elkhorn Tavern and a great cry of "Victory" was sent up. A number of Southerners were cut off and escaped up the Wire Road into Cross Timber Hollow. From there the infantry retraced their steps on the Bentonville Detour. Several batteries marched northeast into Missouri then south through the Ozarks. In the confusion, Curtis failed to understand that Van Dorn had escaped on the Huntsville Road. Thinking that Van Dorn had retreated via Cross Timber Hollow, he sent Sigel and some cavalry to pursue in that direction.

Instead of taking the forces Curtis assigned for the pursuit, Sigel gathered both of his divisions and marched northeast toward Keetsville, Missouri. Near there, he requested that Curtis send his supply train to that place. "I am going forward not backward," remarked an annoyed Curtis to his staff. On March 9, Sigel finally returned to the battlefield and admitted that the Southern main body had not retreated by way of Missouri. The winner of this battle was the Union army.

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The Battle of Murfreesboro

The battle of Murfreesboro occured on July 13, 1862 and was located in Tennesee. On the evening of May 3 and all day May 4, Hooker remained in his defenses while Lee and Early battled Sedgwick. Sedgwick, after breaking Early's defenses, foolishly neglected to secure Fredericksburg. Early simply marched back and reoccupied the heights west of the city, cutting Sedgwick off. Meanwhile, Lee directed the division of Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson from the Chancellorsville front and reinforced McLaws before Sedgwick realized just how few men were opposing him. Sedgwick, as it turned out, was as resolute on the defensive as he was irresolute on the attack, and he stood his ground that day before withdrawing back across the Rappahannock at Banks's Ford during the pre-dawn hours of May 5. This was another miscommunication between him and Hooker; the commanding general had wanted Sedgwick to hold Banks's Ford, so that Hooker could withdraw from the Chancellorsville area and re-cross the river at Banks's to fight again. When he learned that Sedgwick had retreated back over the river, Hooker felt he was out of options to save the campaign, and on the night of May 5–6, he also withdrew back across the river. The winner of this battle was the Confederate army.

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The Battle of Chancellorsville

The battle of Chancellorsville occured on the dates April 30-May 6, 1863 and was located in Virginia.
The Chancellorsville campaign was potentially one of the most lopsided clashes of the war. At the start of the campaign the Union army had an effective fighting force of 133,868 men on the field of battle; the Confederate army numbered less than half that figure, at 60,892. Furthermore, the Union forces were much better supplied and were well-rested after several months of inactivity. Lee's forces, on the other hand, were poorly provisioned and were scattered all over the state of Virginia. Some 15,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia's First Corps, under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, were stationed near Norfolk in order to block a potential threat to Richmond from Federal troops stationed at Fort Monroe and Newport News on the Peninsula, as well as at Norfolk and Suffolk. In light of the continued Federal inactivity, by late March Longstreet's primary assignment became that of acting as the Army of Northern Virginia's new commissary, which meant requisitioning provisions for Lee's forces from the farmers and planters of North Carolina and Virginia. As a result of this the two divisions of Maj. Gen John Bell Hood and Brig. Gen. George Pickett were 130 miles away from Lee's army and would take a week or more to reach it in an emergency. After nearly a year of campaigning, allowing these troops to slip away from his immediate control was Lee's gravest miscalculation. Although He hoped to be able to call on them, these men would not arrive in time to aid his outmanned forces.
More importantly, the engagement began with a Union battle plan superior to most of the previous efforts by Army of the Potomac commanders. A complete overhaul of the army's Bureau of Military Intelligence, which was commanded by Colonel G. H. Sharpe, meant that for once the army's commander had a much more accurate appraisal of the number of troops in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, of how they were organized, and where they were stationed. Apart from gathering the usual sources of information from interrogating prisoners, deserters, "contrabands" (slaves), and refugees, the bureau for the first time coordinated intelligence from other sources including infantry and cavalry reconnaissance, signal stations, and an aerial balloon corps. Colonel Sharpe also recruited scouts from the army and spies from the local population to infiltrate Lee's army and report directly back to the bureau. Overall the new service provided Hooker with a far more accurate estimate of the size of the forces confronting his army than the wild overestimates that had been provided by Allan Pinkerton and his detective agency to Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan during his tenures in command. Armed with this more realistic information, Hooker was able to plan for a flanking attack that, it was hoped, would avoid the bloodbath of direct frontal attacks, which were features of the Battles of Antietam and, more recently, Fredericksburg.The army started from its winter quarters around Fredericksburg, where it faced Lee across the Rappahannock. Hooker planned a bold double envelopment of Lee's forces, sending four corps on a stealthy march northwest, turning south to cross the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers, turning east, and striking Lee in his rear. The remaining corps would strike Lee's front through Fredericksburg. Meanwhile, some 7,500 cavalry under Maj. Gen. George Stoneman were to raid deep into the Confederate rear areas, destroying crucial supply depots along the railroad from the Confederate capital in Richmond to Fredericksburg, which would cut Lee's lines of communication and supply. This bold, aggressive plan was later known as Stoneman's Raid. On April 27–28, the four corps of the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers in several places, most of them near the confluence of the two rivers and the hamlet of Chancellorsville, which was little more than a large mansion, owned by the Frances Chancellor family, at the junction of the Orange Turnpike and Orange Plank Road. In the meantime, the second force of more than 30,000 men, under Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, crossed the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, and Stoneman's cavalry began its movement to reach Lee's rear areas. Because the bulk of his cavalry was used in this way Hooker, who believed that cavalry could not operate efficiently in the heavily wooded Wilderness south of the Rappahannock, was left with only one cavalry brigade with which to operate with his main flanking force. The Confederate cavalry forces commanded by Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart would play a dominant role in the upcoming campaign by providing Lee with a constant flow of information while denying Hooker similar information from his own cavalry. By May 1, Hooker had approximately 70,000 men concentrated in and around Chancellorsville. From his Fredericksburg headquarters, Lee decided to violate one of the generally accepted Principles of War and divide his force in the face of a superior enemy, hoping that aggressive action would allow him to attack and defeat a portion of Hooker's army before it could be fully concentrated against him. He left behind a brigade under Brig. Gen. William Barksdale on heavily fortified Marye's Heights and one division, 12,000 men under Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early, on Prospect Hill to resist any advance by Sedgwick's corps, and he ordered Stonewall Jackson to march west and link up with Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson, assembling 40,000 men to confront Hooker at Chancellorsville. Fortunately for the Confederates, heavy fog along the Rappahannock masked some of these westward movements and Sedgwick chose to wait until he could determine the enemy's intentions. At the same time that General Jackson was marching west to join with Anderson on the morning of May 1, Hooker ordered an advance to the east to strike Anderson, pushing his men out of the impenetrable thickets and scrub pine that characterized the area. This was seen by many Union commanders as a key to victory. If the larger Union army fought in the woods, known as the Wilderness of Spotsylvania, its huge advantage in artillery would be minimized, since artillery could not be used to any great effect in the Wilderness. Fighting began between the Confederate division of Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws and the rightmost division of Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's V Corps, under Maj. Gen. George Sykes. Sykes began an orderly withdrawal, covered by Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock's division.
Despite being in a potentially favorable situation, Hooker halted his brief offensive. His actions may have demonstrated his lack of confidence in handling the complex actions of such a large organization for the first time (he had been an effective and aggressive division and corps commander in previous battles), but he had also decided before beginning the campaign that he would fight the battle defensively, forcing Lee, with his small army, to attack Hooker's larger one. At the [First] Battle of Fredericksburg (December 13, 1862), the Union army had done the attacking and met with a bloody defeat. Hooker knew Lee could not sustain such a defeat and keep an effective army in the field, so he ordered his men to withdraw back into the Wilderness and take a defensive position around Chancellorsville, daring Lee to attack him or retreat with superior forces at his back.
Lee accepted Hooker's gambit and planned an attack for May 2. On the night before, Lee and Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, came up with a risky plan that would once again split his already divided army. Jackson would lead his Second Corps of 28,000 men around to attack the Union right flank. Lee, on the other hand, would exercise personal command of the other 12,000 (the other half of Longstreet's First Corps, commanded directly by Lee during the battle) facing Hooker's entire 70,000 man force at Chancellorsville.
For this to work, several things had to happen. First, Jackson had to make a 12-mile (19 km) march via roundabout roads to reach the Union right, and he had to do it undetected. Second, Lee had to hope that Hooker stayed tamely on the defensive. Third, Early would have to keep Sedgwick bottled up in Fredericksburg. And when Jackson launched his attack, he had to hope that the Union forces were unprepared.
All of these conditions were met. Confederate cavalry under Stuart kept the Union forces from spotting Jackson on his long flank march, which took almost all day. The only sighting came shortly after Jackson's corps disengaged from Union forces south of Chancellorsville, and this worked to the Confederates' advantage—Hooker thought that his cavalry under Stoneman had cut Lee's supply line and that Lee was about to retreat. Therefore, he stayed right where he was and never contemplated an all-out attack, sending only his III Corps of 13,000 men under Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles forward. Sickles captured a handful of Second Corps men and then stopped.
At Fredericksburg, Sedgwick and Hooker were unable to communicate with one another because of a failure of telegraph lines. When Hooker finally got an order to Sedgwick late on the evening of May 2 ordering him to attack Early, Sedgwick failed to do so because he mistakenly believed Early had more men than he did.
But what led most of all to the impending Union disaster was the incompetent commander of the Union XI Corps, Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard. Howard, whose 11,000 men were posted at the far right of the Union line, failed to make any provision for his defense in case of a surprise attack, even though Hooker ordered him to do so. The Union right flank was not anchored on any natural obstacle, and the only defenses against a flank attack consisted of two cannons pointing out into the Wilderness. Also, the XI Corps was a unit with poor morale. Originally commanded by Brig. Gen. Franz Sigel and composed heavily of German immigrants, they were resentful when Sigel was replaced by the non-Germanic Howard. Many of the immigrants had poor English language skills and they were subjected to ethnic friction with the rest of the Army of the Potomac. The corps' readiness was poor as well—of the 23 regiments, eight had no combat experience, and the remaining 15 had never fought on the winning side of a battle.
Around 5:30 p.m., Jackson's 26,000 men came running out of the Wilderness and hit Howard's corps by surprise while most of them were cooking dinner. More than 4,000 of them were taken prisoner without firing a shot, and most of the remainder were routed. Only one division of the XI Corps made a stand, and it was soon driven off as well. By nightfall, the Confederate Second Corps had advanced more than two miles, to within sight of Chancellorsville, and was separated from Lee's men only by Sickles's corps, which remained where it had been after attacking that morning. Hooker suffered a minor injury during the peak of the fighting when a Confederate cannonball hit a wooden pillar he was leaning against at his headquarters. Although practically incapacitated, Hooker refused to turn over command temporarily to his second-in-command, Maj. Gen. Darius N. Couch, and this failure affected Union performance over the next day and contributed to Hooker's lack of nerve and timid performance throughout the rest of the battle.
Hooker, concerned about Sickles's ability to hold what was now a salient into the Confederate lines, pulled the III Corps back to Chancellorsville that night. This gave the Confederates two advantages—it reunited Jackson and Lee's forces, and it gave them control of an elevated clearing in the woods known as Hazel Grove, one of the few places in which artillery could be used effectively.
Jackson's mistake came when he was scouting ahead of his corps along the Orange Plank Road that night. Having won a huge victory that day, Jackson wanted to press his advantage before Hooker and his army could regain their bearings and plan a counterattack, which might still succeed because of the sheer disparity in numbers. He rode out onto the plank road that night, unrecognized by men of the Second Corps behind him, and was hit by friendly fire. The wound was not life-threatening, but Jackson contracted pneumonia after his arm was amputated, and he died on May 10. His death was a devastating loss for the Confederacy. On May 3, Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill, who had taken command of the Second Corps following Jackson's injuries, was incapacitated. Hill consulted with Brig. Gen. Robert E. Rodes, the next most senior general in the corps, and Rodes acquiesced in Hill's decision to summon J. E. B. Stuart to take command, notifying Lee after the fact. Stuart launched a massive assault all along the front, aided by Hooker who was withdrawing troops from Hazel Grove, and then set up artillery on the spot to bombard Union artillerists. Fierce fighting broke out that evening when Stuart launched another massive assault against the Union lines, which were slowly crumbling from the pressure and a lack of resupply and reinforcements. By that afternoon, the Confederates had captured Chancellorsville, and Hooker pulled his battered men back to a line of defense circling United States Ford, their last remaining open line of retreat.
Still, Lee could not declare victory, and Hooker was not conceding defeat either. During the peak of the fighting at Chancellorsville on May 3, he again called on Sedgwick to break through and attack Lee's rear. Again that general delayed until it was too late. That afternoon, he finally did attack Early's position, and broke through. But he did it too late in the day to help Hooker. In fact, a single brigade of Alabama troops led by Brig. Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox staged a delaying action along the Orange Plank Road west of Fredericksburg and slowed Sedgwick's already-sluggish advance. Reinforcements under Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws arrived from Chancellorsville late in the afternoon and joined Wilcox at Salem Church, four miles west of Fredericksburg, and the combined Confederate force halted Sedgwick's march to Chancellorsville.
The fighting on May 3, 1863, was some of the most furious anywhere in the war and would have ranked among the bloodiest battles of the Civil War by itself. About 18,000 men, divided equally between the two armies, fell that day. On the evening of May 3 and all day May 4, Hooker remained in his defenses while Lee and Early battled Sedgwick. Sedgwick, after breaking Early's defenses, foolishly neglected to secure Fredericksburg. Early simply marched back and reoccupied the heights west of the city, cutting Sedgwick off. Meanwhile, Lee directed the division of Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson from the Chancellorsville front and reinforced McLaws before Sedgwick realized just how few men were opposing him. Sedgwick, as it turned out, was as resolute on the defensive as he was irresolute on the attack, and he stood his ground that day before withdrawing back across the Rappahannock at Banks's Ford during the pre-dawn hours of May 5. This was another miscommunication between him and Hooker; the commanding general had wanted Sedgwick to hold Banks's Ford, so that Hooker could withdraw from the Chancellorsville area and re-cross the river at Banks's to fight again. When he learned that Sedgwick had retreated back over the river, Hooker felt he was out of options to save the campaign, and on the night of May 5–6, he also withdrew back across the river. The winner of this battle was the Confederate army.

I found this work on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/battle_of_chancellorsville

The Battle of Spotsylvania

The battle of Spotsylvania occured on the dates May 8-21, 1864 and was located in Virginia. After Lee checked the Union advance in the Wilderness, Grant decided to take advantage of the position he held, which allowed him to slip his army around Lee's right flank and continue to move south toward the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. He already had troops on the move by the night of May 7, just one day after the Wilderness fighting ended, and on May 8, he sent Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren and his V Corps to take Spotsylvania, 10 miles (16 km) to the southeast. Lee anticipated Grant's move and sent forces to intercept him: cavalry under Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart and the First Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson.

The Confederates won the race to Spotsylvania, and on May 9, each army began to take up new positions north of the small town. As Union forces probed Confederate skirmish lines on May 9 to determine the placement of defending forces, Union VI Corps commander Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick was killed by a sharpshooter; he was succeeded by Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright. Lee deployed his men in a trench line stretching more than four miles (6.5 km), with artillery placed that would allow enfilade fire on any attacking force. There was only one major weakness in Lee's line—an exposed salient known as the "Mule Shoe" extending more than a mile (1.6 km) in front of the main trench line. Lee recognized this weakness during the fighting of May 10, when twelve Union regiments under the command of Col. Emory Upton followed up a concentrated, intense artillery attack by slamming into the toe of the Mule Shoe along a narrow front. They actually broke the Confederate line, and the Second Corps had a hard time driving them out. Upton's attack won him a promotion on the spot to brigadier general, and it became a staple of military textbooks on how to break an enemy trench line. Similar tactics were used by Germany in Operation Michael, its successful March 1918 offensive during World War I. Other Federal assaults on May 10 were less successful, and the day was generally characterized by uncoordinated frontal assaults that Grant ordered impulsively. Repeated attacks were particularly futile along the Confederate left, where Union General Warren failed many times to storm a position called Laurel Hill. On May 11, Grant began the planning for an attack aimed at the Mule Shoe salient, with the intent of employing Upton's tactics on the level of an entire corps. Lee took Grant's inactivity as a sign that the Federal Army was getting ready to pull back, either for a retreat, or for another sidle to the East, and as a result, he weakened the critical sector of the Mule Shoe by withdrawing its artillery support. Grant's pre-dawn assault on the Mule Shoe on May 12 was initially a complete success. The well-fought II Corps of 20,000 men, commanded by Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, led the attack against the Mule Shoe in the same manner that Upton had attacked on May 10. This time, the breach in the Confederate line was complete, thanks in part to the absence of Confederate artillery support, but also because many of the Confederates suffered from wet powder in their rifled muskets due to rainfall the night before, and thus found that their guns would not fire. Hancock's II Corps took close to 4,000 prisoners, destroying Edward "Allegheny" Johnson's division of the Confederate Second Corps. Both the divisional commander and one of his brigadier generals were captured. Then the fighting bogged down, in part because Grant had not properly prepared a second wave to take advantage of the success. Anxious to sustain momentum, Grant ordered supporting attacks from Wright's VI Corps, and from the IX Corps of (Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside), but the attacks were not well coordinated, and failed to recapture the momentum of the attack. Lee was also able to shift thousands of his men to seal the breach, most notably launching a counterattack with Brig. Gen. John Brown Gordon's division, and also securing much help from the able leadership of Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Ramseur.
Because of the severity of the crisis, Lee felt compelled to personally lead soldiers in the counterattack. His men realized the danger this would pose to him, however, and refused to advance until Lee removed himself to a safer position in the rear. The several "Lee to the rear" episodes later became famous, and were a intense example of the personal bond that Lee's soldiers felt for him. The battle in the Mule Shoe lasted for an entire day and night, as the Confederates slowly won back most of the ground they had lost, inflicting heavy losses on the II Corps and on the reinforcing VI Corps in the process. The fighting was characterized by an intensity of firepower never previously seen in Civil War battles, as the entire landscape was flattened, all the foliage destroyed. Both sides, fighting from back and forth over the same corpse-strewn trenches, engaged in hand-to-hand fighting, and there were many descriptions of the field as a morass of corpses, piled so high that wounded men buried underneath them were pressed down into the mud, where they drowned. The angle between the Union II and VI Corps became known as the "Bloody Angle of Spotsylvania", where perhaps some of the most savage fighting of the whole Civil War took place.
By 3 a.m. on May 13, the ruined remnants of Lee's Second Corps had finished construction on a fallback line at the base of the Mule Shoe salient, and Lee had his battered men retire behind it. More than 10,000 men fell in the Mule Shoe, which passed to the Union forces without a fight. On May 18, Grant sent two of his corps to attack the new line, but they were met with a bloody repulse. That convinced Grant, who had vowed to "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," that Lee's men could not be dislodged from their Spotsylvania line.
Grant, checked by Lee for a second time, responded as he had two weeks earlier. He shifted the weight of his army to the right flank and again moved to the southeast along roads Lee was unable to block. By May 20–21, the two armies were on their way to take positions along the North Anna River, another dozen miles closer to Richmond. There was no winner at this battle because it was a draw.

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The Battle of Franklin

The battle of Franklin occured on November 30, 1864 and was located in Tennesee. Franklin followed the Battle of Spring Hill of the previous day. Hood's Army of Tennessee had failed to destroy part of the Union force in Tennessee, allowing Schofield's Army of the Ohio to escape. Hood had hoped to destroy Schofield before he could link up with the Army of the Cumberland, commanded by Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas, farther north in Nashville, Tennessee. That combined Union force would be over 60,000 men. When the armies met at Franklin, however, Hood had approximately 38,000 men to Schofield's 30,000.
Schofield's advance guard arrived in Franklin at about 6:00 a.m., after a forced march north from Spring Hill. Brig. Gen. Jacob Dolson Cox, a division commander temporarily commanding the Union XXIII Corps (and later governor of Ohio), immediately began preparing strong defensive positions around breastworks originally constructed for the First Battle of Franklin in 1863. The defensive line formed approximately a semicircle around the city, from northwest to southeast; the other half of the semicircle was the Harpeth River.
Schofield's decided to defend at Franklin with his back to the river because he had no pontoon bridges then available to cross; the bridges had been left behind in his retreat from Columbia because they lacked wagons to transport them. He needed time to repair one of the two permanent bridges spanning the river (both of which had been burned) and to lay planking over the undamaged railroad bridge to enable it to carry wagons and troops. His supply train parked in the side streets to keep the main pike open but continued to cross, first via a ford next to the burned out pike bridge, and later in the afternoon by the two makeshift bridges. By the beginning of the assault, nearly all the supply wagons were across the Harpeth and on the road to Nashville.
By noon the Union works, a strong exterior line fronted by a ditch and a secondary support line some 65 to 40 yards behind the center, were ready. Counter-clockwise from the northwest were the divisions of Maj. Gens. Nathan Kimball (IV Corps), Thomas H. Ruger (XXIII Corps), and Cox (XXIII Corps). Two brigades of Brig. Gen. George D. Wagner's division of IV Corps were a half mile forward, screening the Confederate approach, with orders to fall back if pressed. Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Wood's division of IV Corps was posted north of the Harpeth to watch for any flanking attempt. Schofield planned to withdraw his infantry across the river by 6:00 p.m. if Hood had not arrived by then.
Hood's army began to arrive on Winstead Hill, two miles south of Franklin, around 1 p.m. Hood was noted for his aggressive, sometimes reckless battlefield leadership, and had since his assumption of command of the Army of Tennessee stung it with criticisms that it was reluctant to fight except behind breastworks. Over the objections of his top generals, he ordered a frontal assault in the dwindling afternoon light against the Union forces, now strongly entrenched behind two lines of breastworks and with Wagner a half mile in front. Many believe that Hood was still angry that the Federal army had slipped past his troops the night before at Spring Hill, but angry or not, Hood's objective was to try to crush Schofield before he and his troops could escape to Nashville. The Confederates began moving forward at 3:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., with Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham's corps on the left of the assault and Lt. Gen. Alexander P. Stewart's on the right. Hood's attack initially enveloped Wagner's forward brigades under Lane and Conrad, which despite orders not to engage in front of the works, stood their ground. Whether or not Wagner ordered the change in orders from those issued by XXIII Corps commander Gen. Cox remains a matter of controversy (Wagner claimed he did not; one brigade commander contradicted him in official reports and Wagner was relieved of command in December.) The veteran soldiers of these brigades fled back to the main breastworks while untried replacements were reluctant to move under fire and were captured.
Officers in Strickland's brigade (Ruger's division, west of the turnpike) failed to prepare for passage of the lines by the retreating troops with Confederates in close pursuit, which made the Union soldiers defending the line reluctant to fire on the approaching masses. This, combined with the opening in the works through which the Columbia Pike passed, caused a weak spot in the Union line at the Carter House. The Confederate divisions of Maj. Gens. Patrick Cleburne, John C. Brown, and Samuel G. French converged on this spot and a number of their troops broke through the solid Federal defenses. Strickland's regiments fell back to avoid capture. A spontaneous counterattack, led by the brigade of Col. Emerson Opdycke and fortified by rallied elements of Wagner's men, newly mustered regiments such as the 44th Missouri, 175th and 183rd Ohio, and two veteran Kentucky regiments, managed to retake the lost works and seal the gap after brief but vicious hand-to-hand combat. By 5 p.m., when the sun set, the Union line was again firmly entrenched. On the east side of the battlefield Maj. Gens. William W. Loring and Edward C. Walthall saw their troops torn apart. Maj. Gen. William B. Bate on the west side of the field fared no better, and no further assaults were attempted on the flanks.
In the center, however, the Confederates, believing that an irreparable breach had been made and seeking to exploit it, made repeated but uncoordinated assaults on the Union second line. After dark, around 7 p.m., the division of Maj. Gen. Edward "Allegheny" Johnson attacked and had no more luck than its predecessors, but was the only division of Lee's intact corps to be ordered to attack. Large numbers of Confederate troops became pinned down in the ditch fronting the main line, and an intense firefight transpired for hours, each side firing through embrasures or over the top of the parapets at close range in an attempt to dislodge the other.
By 9:00 p.m. the fighting had mostly subsided. The overall attack had been awesome, described by some as a tidal wave, and known as the "Pickett's Charge of the West." But it was actually much larger than the famous charge at Gettysburg. In the East, 12,500 Confederates had crossed a mile (1.6 km) of open ground in a single assault lasting about 50 minutes. In Franklin, some 19,000 marched into the guns a distance of nearly two miles (3.2 km) and conducted assaults in multiple waves that lasted over five hours.
Across the river to the east, Confederate cavalry commander Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest attempted to turn the Union left flank, but the Union cavalry under Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson repulsed his advance.
Schofield, who spent the battle in Fort Granger (just across the Harpeth River, northeast of Franklin), ordered his infantry to cross the river, starting at 11:00 p.m., despite objections from Cox that withdrawal was no longer necessary. (Union reinforcements under Maj. Gen. A.J. Smith were already in Nashville.) Although there was a period in which the Union army was vulnerable, straddling the river, Hood was too stunned to take advantage of it. The Union army began entering the breastworks at Nashville at noon on December 1. The victor of this battle was the Union army.

I found this work on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Franklin