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First Day at Chancellorsville
Difficult Country
"We were in a perfect jungle of rank vines and undergrowth."
-- Col. A. J. McBride, 10th Georgia Infantry, CSA
Few Civil War sites evoke such indelible, mental images as the Wilderness. Densely forested and dark, fighting in the Wilderness of Spotsylvania County was a nightmare. Hooker wanted to avoid fighting in the Wilderness at all, but Lee forced his hand by confronting him here. The few clearings such as this one along the Orange Turnpike became natural battlefields by default.
Hooker's army found the Wilderness nearly impenetrable. To avoid the tangle of trees, his forces advanced eastward on three roads that met on open, high ground one mile behind you. Separated by dense forest, however, the three parts of Hooker's army were virtually isolated from one another.
While the Federals tried to avoid the Wilderness, the Confederates took advantage of it. On May 1, Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's command, concealed in the thickets of the Wilderness, was able to surprise the Union forces and to charge the course of the Chancellorsville campaign. |