The Twin Turning

CHAPTER 7 · MAY–JUL 1863 · The American Civil War, 1861–1865

The year opens with Lee’s masterpiece and its price. At Chancellorsville in May, outnumbered two to one, he splits his army twice and routs the Union flank at dusk — and Stonewall Jackson, scouting ahead in the dark, is shot by his own men and dies eight days later. Emboldened, Lee takes 75,000 men north (the long red arrow) — one more invasion to feed Virginia’s exhausted farms, wreck a Union army on its own soil, and hand the North’s peace party a case before the 1864 season. The armies collide by accident at a Pennsylvania crossroads town. Three days at Gettysburg: the Union fishhook line b

The turn: Vicksburg, 4 July 1863.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.