It has been called Robert E. Lee's supreme moment: riding into the
Chancellorsville clearing...the mansion itself aflame in the
background...his gunpowder-smeared soldiers crowding around him, hats
off, cheering wildly.
After one of the most audacious gambits of the war, Lee and his men had
defeated a foe more than two and half times their size. The Federal
commander, "Fighting Joe" Hooker, had boasted days earlier that his
plans were perfect -- yet his army had crumbled, and Hooker himself had
literally been knocked senseless.
History would remember the battle of Chancellorsville as "Lee's Greatest
Victory."
But Confederate fortunes had reached their high tide. Never again would
fortune favor Lee the way it did at Chancellorsville - -even though the
war continued another two years.
That Furious Struggle: Chancellorsville and the High Tide of the
Confederacy recounts the story of the Army of Northern Virginia's last
offensive battlefield victory -- a tale of triumph and tragedy that
includes that second-bloodiest day of the Civil War; the mortal wounding
of one of Confederacy's greatest icons, Stonewall Jackson; and the bold
leadership of the man known as "audacity itself."
Told in the highly readable style that has become the hallmark of the
Emerging Civil War Series, That Furious Struggle contains more than a
hundred and fifty modern and historical photos, outstanding maps, and an
insider's perspective of the battlefield as told by historians who
intimately know the ground and the battle.
