Chancellorsville is described as being General Lee's greatest victory, and it has gone down in the annals of military history as a time when a General defied military convention, and came out successful. That is the side that most Americans know, but do you know the story of the family and the home that give the battle it's name?
"Chancellorsville" in the 1860s was not a town like the name implies, but instead was a single building, which was a large house owned by the Chancellor family. The house was located 12 miles west of Fredericksburg and had been built in 1816, at the intersection of 4 busy roads, the main one being the Orange Turnpike. By 1860, Mrs. Chancellor (recently widowed) was living in the house with her 7 children. At times she opened her home as an inn/tavern to travelers on the Orange Turnpike. After the battle and occupation of Fredericksburg in 1862 she had opened her home to refugees from Fredericksburg. She also welcomed Confederate soldiers and officers to her tavern through out the spring of 1863. The soldiers and officers became frequent guests, and the family had an easy relationship with them. In fact, Calvary Officer J.E.B Stuart even gave one of the Chancellor girls a gold dollar, which is still on display in the Chancellorsville Visitor Center to this day. However, in April of 1863, the world of the Chancellor family would be blown to bits, literally, as a massive battle overtook the home and family.
In late April of 1863, the Union Army arrived in Chancellorsville, with the hope of using the converging roads as a means of attacking the Confederates at Fredericksburg. At the same time, the Confederate Army is moving west to trying to trap the Union Army. These dual movements put the Chancellor house at the center of the coming battle. On April 30, Union General Joseph Hooker arrives as the Chancellor House, and commandeers it for his headquarters. He forces the family and guests of the house into a back room, where he orders them kept under guard. What a stark contrast this type of treatment from the brass of the Union Army must have been to the family, after their friendly and cordial relationships with the Confederate Army brass. Sue Chancellor, who was only 14 at the time of the battle, left a vivid account of her and her family's experience during the battle. Of being kept under guard in their own home she writes "we never sat down to a meal again in that house, but they brought food to us in our room."
As the battle begins, the home is quickly needed as a hospital because of the wounded coming back from the battlefield. It does not take long for the house to be bursting with wounded, causing the occupying Union soldiers to become desperate for more space to put wounded. This need for space causes the soldiers to move the family into the cellar of the house, where the family could be held in relative safety. As the family was being moved to the cellar, Sue made the mistake of looking outside, and was horrified at what she saw. She writes "Oh the horror of that day! The piles of legs and arms outside the sitting room window and the rows and rows of dead bodies covered with canvas."
On May 3rd, the battle climaxes, with the heaviest fighting happening around the Chancellor house. Confederate guns stationed at Hazel Grove were focusing all of their fire power on the Chancellor house, in an attempt to dislodge the Union Army from the area. The heavy barrage of artillery causes the buildings and surrounding grounds to start on fire, forcing the evacuation of the Chancellor family from the cellar of their home. With barely time to grab any valuables, the family must make their way from the house to safety across an active battlefield, while trying to avoid shot, shell and dead bodies. You can only imagine the panic of moving women and children through what must have seemed like hell on earth. Sue writes this of the evacuation "Slowly we picked our way over the bleeding bodies of the dead and wounded...at the last look our old home was completely enveloped in flame." After being moved from their home, the family would be taken to a nearby plantation across the Rappahannock River, where they would be held under guard for ten more days. It would not be until both armies had retired from the field that the family would be released. Since their house had been destroyed by fire during the battle, the Chancellor family would eventually make their way to Charlottesville Virginia, where they would stay for the duration of the war.
Sue Chancellor would survive the battle and the war, and eventually marry her cousin Vespasian Chancellor, who was a cavalry scout for JEB Stuart during the war. Before her death in 1935, Sue published her account of the battle in the Confederate Veteran magazine, and to this day, it remains the most important primary source used to interpret the site. Sue was never able to forget the horrors she witnessed during the battle and later in life she would write: "The horrible impression of those days of agony and conflict is still vivid, and I can see the blazing woods, the house in flames, the flying shot and shell, and the terror-stricken women and children pushing their way over the dead and wounded." Although the tavern would be rebuilt, it would burn down again in 1927.
Today when you visit the site, all that is left is the outline of the foundation of the home. Archeologists have excavated the remaining rocks, and have the original foundation outlined. It gives you an idea of the size of the house, and serves as a sad yet powerful reminder of the cost of war.
When studying the military movements of the Civil War, the civilian stories are often overshadowed. We know that people were living where battles happen, but we often forget what that meant for those people, and how it forever changed the course of their lives. We forget the terror those civilians must have felt as they huddled in cellars, their homes taken over as headquarters or hospitals, or the panic they must have felt as they fled for their lives from their homes, never knowing if they would return. The battles lasted a few hours or days, and the armies moved on, leaving the civilian population left behind, to try and pick up the pieces of their shattered world. Many left and never returned, some stayed and did the best they could with fields and buildings utterly destroyed, but none who lived through a battle could ever forget the traumatic experience of seeing men blown to bits on their front steps. Trying to understand the experiences of the civilians is what makes Sue Chancellor's version of the battle so unique and intriguing. She was not a military commander with a reputation to protect, or a soldier with a score to settle, she was simply a child whose innocence was ripped from her in one of the most traumatic ways possible. Her telling of the battle gives a glimpse into the experience of the non-soldiers who also lived through the horrors of war.
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