The Battle of Chancellorsville

Long after the Civil War, Sergeant Rice Bull of the 123rd New York Volunteers remembered the early morning hours of May 3, 1863. "Never was there a more beautiful sunrise," he wrote, "not a cloud in the sky. It was an ideal Sunday morning, warm and fair. It seemed to me like sacrilege that such a sacred day should be used by men to kill and maim each other." Yet kill they did. In five house of fighting, more than 17,500 soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured—one soldier for every second of combat. It was perhaps the bloodiest morning in America's history.

The most intense fighting took place in these woods. Now peaceful and still, this forest resounded with the deadly clash of arms as soldiers by the thousands killed and maimed one another among the spring's budding green foliage. The struggle was bitter, the fighting tenacious. When Union artillery at Fairview shelled the woods, the dry leaves caught fire, consuming the dead and wounded alike, adding to the morning's horror.

"The scene as I marched through the burning woods...was harrowing—unexploded shells & muskets going off in all directions, the dead of both sides enveloped in flames, the appealing cries of helpless, wounded Federals to be removed from the tracks of fire, the heavy pall of stifling sulfurous smoke, all added to the general roar of battle made it a perfect hell on earth. I do not wish to witness anything like it again."
Confederate General James Lane

(caption)
Rescuing the wounded from the burning woods