Booknotes: The Forgotten Battles of the Chancellorsville Campaign

New Arrival:

• The Forgotten Battles of the Chancellorsville Campaign: Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks’ Ford in Spring 1863 by Erik F. Nelson (Kent St UP, 2024).

It's not surprising that Chancellorsville campaign histories devote the bulk of their attention to the western end of the battlefield. After all, it was there in the Wilderness sector where Stonewall Jackson's famous flank attack (and mortal wounding) took place, and the slugging matches around Hazel Grove and the Chancellorsville crossroads produced the battle's heaviest casualties. It's also where preservation efforts have been concentrated.

More recent publishing efforts have addressed this coverage imbalance, however, and there are now two full-length studies of the fighting east of Zoan Church. Both works, which are similar in scale, emphasize the "forgotten" theme in their respective titles. An excellent study published just over a decade ago, Chris Mackowski and Kristopher White's Chancellorsville's Forgotten Front: The Battles of Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church, May 3, 1863 (2013) set the standard. Now we have Erik Nelson's The Forgotten Battles of the Chancellorsville Campaign: Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks’ Ford in Spring 1863 (2024), which revisits the same ground, to consider.

From the description: "To demonstrate how a Union force overpowered Confederate troops in and around Fredericksburg, Erik F. Nelson emphasizes the role of terrain and reexamines contemporary documentation. Previous studies have relied on misleading primary sources that have left the campaign―and the Union’s eventual larger victory―misunderstood. Moreover, the former battlegrounds near Fredericksburg have been physically altered by new roads and neighborhoods, further complicating study and understanding." The claim regarding "misleading" contemporary sources shaping previous understanding of these events and beyond intrigues me.

The book has 21 maps, fine-looking affairs from top-shelf cartographer Steven Stanley. The appendix section contains orders of battle, detailed battery composition tables, and a reconsideration of the May 3 Second Fredericksburg flag of truce controversy.

Even though the Chancellorsville Campaign proved to be a shocking defeat for the Army of the Potomac, which possessed seemingly overwhelming numerical superiority over an Army of Northern Virginia heavily depleted through pre-battle detachments, Nelson nevertheless contends that tactical success achieved on the Fredericksburg sector by Sedgwick's command was part of a positive omen. More from the description: "Nelson’s thorough consideration of the physical settings at Fredericksburg, Salem Church, and Banks’ Ford helps readers better understand how the Army of the Potomac had developed the capability to prevail against Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia long before they emerged victorious at Gettysburg."