Stonewall Jackson's Flank Attack at Chancellorsville

At Chancellorsville in May 1863 Lee was outnumbered roughly two to one and did the thing the manuals forbid: he divided his army in the face of a larger one, and then divided it again. He sent Jackson with some 28,000 men on a twelve-mile march around the Union right, screened by the same tangled Wilderness scrub that would swallow Grant's army a year later.

The Union XI Corps on that flank had its arms stacked and supper cooking. At about five in the afternoon the woods in front of them filled with deer and rabbits running ahead of something, and then with Jackson's first line. The corps was rolled up and driven back more than a mile before darkness and exhaustion stopped the attack.

Jackson rode forward that night to find the Union position in the dark, trying to work out whether he could keep going. Returning, his party was fired on by his own North Carolina troops. His left arm was amputated; he died of pneumonia eight days later. Lee's remark has outlived the battle: he has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right.