NORTHCOM Battle Knowledge Centers

Chancellorsville's Forgotten Front tightens the lens for a thorough examination of the decision-making, movements, and fighting that led to the breakthrough, inland thrust, and ultimate bloody stalemate at Salem Church. Authors Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White have long appreciated the pivotal roles Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church played in the campaign, and just how close the Southern army came to grief—and the Union army to stunning success. Together they seamlessly weave their extensive newspaper, archival, and firsthand research into a compelling narrative to better understand these combats, which usually garner little more than a footnote to the larger story of Jackson's march and tragic fatal wounding. The success at Second Fredericksburg was one of the Union army's few bright spots in the campaign, while the setback at Salem Church stands as its most devastating lost opportunity. Instead of being trapped between the Sixth Corps'hammer and “Fighting Joe” Hooker's anvil, Lee overcame long odds to achieve what is widely recognized as his greatest victory.

First published in 1895, this small masterpiece set the pattern for the treatment of war in modern fiction. The novel is told through the eyes of Henry Fleming, a young soldier caught up in an unnamed Civil War battle who is motivated not by the unselfish heroism of conventional war stories, but by fear, cowardice, and finally, egotism. However, in his struggle to find reality amid the nightmarish chaos of war, the young soldier also discovers courage, humility, and perhaps, wisdom.

For the past half century, John Keegan, the greatest military historian of our time, has been returning to the scenes of America's most bloody and wrenching war to ponder its lingering conundrums: the continuation of fighting for four years between such vastly mismatched sides; the dogged persistence of ill-trained, ill-equipped, and often malnourished combatants; the effective absence of decisive battles among some two to three hundred known to us by name. Now Keegan examines these and other puzzles with a peerless understanding of warfare, uncovering dimensions of the conflict that have eluded earlier historiography.

Stephenson assembles an impressive roster of the world's best military historians and writers to discuss the impact of geography on military strategy and history. This collection of essays, illustrated with vintage and modern maps, offers geographic adventure around the world, across centuries, and through every kind of terrain, shedding new light on famous battles and introducing less well-known-but nevertheless significant-moments in military history.

Osprey's examination of the Battle of Chancellorsville (1863) of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Following the debacle of the battle of Fredricksburg in December 1862, Burnside was replaced as commander of the Army of the Potomac by General Joseph Hooker. Having reorganised the army and improved morale, he planned an attack that would take his army to Richmond and end the war. Although faced by an army twice his size, the Confederate commander Robert E. Lee split his forces: Jubal Early was left to hold off Sedgwick's Fredericksburg attack, and 'Stonewall' Jackson was sent with 26,000 men in a wide envelopment around Hooker's right flank. This title details how at dusk on May 2, Jackson's men crashed into the Federal right flank, and how stiffening Federal resistance slowed the Confederate advance the next day.

The stories of battles of the Civil War and the men who fought this war using historical documentation and reenactments.