Chancellorsville Battlefield: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park

Auwaerter, John

Chancellorsville Battlefield is part of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, located in northeastern Virginia halfway between Washington D.C. and Richmond, Virginia. Covering over 7,000 acres, the park was designated by Congress in 1927 as a national military park for the purpose of preserving and commemorating the Civil War battles of Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania Court House, Wilderness, and Chancellorsville. Initially administered and developed by the U.S. War Department, the park was transferred in 1933 to civilian administration of the National Park Service. The Chancellorsville Battlefield unit today consists of over 2,000 acres, and features a landscape of fields and woods with subtle traces of war, commemorative markers, park drives, and trails completed by 1963 on the centennial of the battle. However, at the time of the battle in 1863, Chancellorsville was a remote, rural community of scattered farms and small plantations named after its most prominent residents, the Chancellor family. One of the three Chancellor plantations included a large brick house known as the Chancellorsville Inn that was the physical and social heart of the community. On April 30, 1863, federal forces began to wrest control of Fredericksburg from the Confederates, leading to fighting that stretched across a ten-mile corridor south of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers and west to Chancellorsville. Here, the U.S. Army of the Potomac under General Joseph Hooker clashed against the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee for three days of fighting on May 1, 2, and 3. The Union’s most notorious defeat of the battle resulted from General “Stonewall” Jackson’s surprise attack on the U.S. right flank on May 2, 1863. Heavy fighting ruined the landscape and left the Chancellorsville Inn a burned-out shell. Casualties numbered more than 30,000, among whom was General Jackson, who was mortally wounded in the woods west of the inn. The Confederate victory at Chancellorsville emboldened General Lee to invade the North, leading to the Battle of Gettysburg two months later. The Chancellorsville Battlefield landscape today tells the story of the battle through its forests, fields, earthworks, circulation, and archaeological sites, with an overlay of early-to-mid 20th-century park infrastructure, markers, and a small number of historic commemorative works. Route 3, a busy divided four-lane highway that extends through the core of the park, forms the spine of the battlefield. It and other heavily-travelled public roads and suburban housing subdivisions are a backdrop to the battlefield’s hallowed ground.

Chancellorsville Battlefield: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park

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