Robert E. Lee’s Greatest Victories

Summary

After Lee succeeded the wounded Johnston, he pushed McClellan’s Army of the Potomac away from Richmond and back up the Peninsula in late June, only to then swing his army north to face a second Union army, John Pope’s Army of Virginia. Needing to strike out before the Army of the Potomac successfully sailed back to Washington and linked up with Pope’s army, Lee daringly split his army to threaten Pope’s supply lines, forcing Pope to fall back to Manassas to protect his flank and maintain his lines of communication. At the same time, it left half of Lee’s army (under Stonewall Jackson) potentially exposed against the larger Union army until the other wing (under James Longstreet) linked back up. Thus, in late August 1862, the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Virginia found themselves fighting over nearly the exact same land the South and North fought over in the First Battle of Bull Run 13 months earlier. 

Of all the Civil War battles fought, and of all the victories achieved by Robert E. Lee at the command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, the Battle of Chancellorsville is considered the most tactically complex and ultimately the most brilliant Confederate victory of the war. In early May 1863, the Army of the Potomac was at the height of its power as it bore down on Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia near Fredericksburg, where the Confederates had defeated them the previous December. The Union behemoth had spent most of the winter season being reorganized and drilled by “Fighting Joe” Hooker, an aggressive commander who had fought hard at places like Antietam. With an army nearing 130,000 men, Hooker’s Army of the Potomac was twice the size of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s heavily outnumbered army went on to win the most stunning victory of the war, but it cost them nearly 25% of their men and Stonewall Jackson.