Chancellorsville|The Wilderness in Go Down, Moses (Location)

Two major Civil War battles were fought a year but just a few miles apart near Chancellorsville in Spotsylvania County. The first, called the Battle of Chancellorsville, took place between April 30 to May 6, 1863. In the account of this event that Cass Edmonds provides, the Union Army General Joseph Hooker sits on the front gallery of a house in Chancellorsville "drinking rum toddies and telegraphing Lincoln that he had defeated Lee" (272), although the the battle with General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army would ultimately in Hooker's defeat. Stonewall Jackson's surprise flank attack along "the Plank Road" at the end of the battle's first day routed the Union troops, though Cass' main point about the battle is that Jackson himself was accidentally and fatally shot by his own troops soon afterwards (272). Later in the same speech Cass mentions that another Confederate general, Longstreet, was "shot out of saddle by his own men in the dark by mistake just as Jackson was" (273). Though Cass doesn't say so explicitly, this happened at the Battle of the Wilderness, fought May 5-7, 1864; a total of over 5000 men were killed there, but Longstreet survived his wound.