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Date published: 10/19/2002
Part 33 of a series on the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville WHILE CONFEDERATE artillery gradually exerted its influence south of the Orange Plank Road (modern State Route 3) early on May 3, 1863, a separate conflict raged north of that road. Foot soldiers fought deadly battles in the thickets there, just as their mates were doing farther to the south, but north of the road artillery did not much affect their operations. Across the rolling ground east and northeast of where the National Park Service museum stands today, thousands of soldiers of both sides floundered through the obscuring thickets and waged a deadly struggle at close range. In more open country, the contending lines would have recognized the circumstances they faced far sooner, and reacted accordingly. Regiments and brigades seeking to advance as ordered, or to defend their ground, frequently only discovered an enemy's line by virtually stumbling upon it. More often than not, that tardy awareness led to casualties and retreat. The sound of volleys supplied vague information before anything could be seen through the leaves and branches--but who was firing at whom? To Federals, the daunting sound of the Rebel Yell seemed to echo ominously from every point of the compass. A Pennsylvanian officer who took his regiment into the woods recalled that the Georgians opposite him fired a volley at the rustling noises that his men made in advancing. The Confederate muskets belched a long line of sulphurous gunsmoke that hung in the morning air "like a chalk line and indicated their exact position." The Pennsylvanians fired at the visible line of smoke, then advanced. Confederate Gen. William Dorsey Pender played an important role in the Chancellorsville woods that morning. Pender's letters to his wife survive in gratifying volume, and have reached print in three different editions. In describing the morning of May 3 to Mrs. Pender, the general reported, with mournful pride, that his North Carolina brigade "behaved magnificently and got cut up terribly" (nearly 700 casualties).
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