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Not all the events preceding the battle of Chancellorsville boded so negatively for the German American regiments. In early February, the regimental commanders of the Eleventh Corps submitted status reports to their brigade commanders. The news was very good. Both the twenty-seventh and seventy-fifth Pennsylvania, for instance, were in excellent condition, numbering 449 and 355 effectives, respectively. Colonel Franz Mahler of the seventy-fifth mentioned the “flattering remarks made on several occasions by our esteemed Brigade Commander, Col. Wladimir Krzyzanowski”, about the precision in drill of the regiment. Later, on the tenth of April near Brooks Station, Abraham Lincoln and other notables from Washington reviewed the Eleventh Corps as it paraded by at the salute. Lieutenant Colonel Alwin von Matzdorff called his regiment's performance “brilliant”, and remarked “that all were astonished at the grand appearance of the Dutch!”. Private Adam Muenzenberger of the twenty-sixth Wisconsin boasted to his wife that his regiment was the largest in the Eleventh Corps, and “also the cleanest and the neatest”.

This chapter examines the use of fortifications by the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia at the battle of Chancellorsville during the Civil War. Chancellorsville, a key crossroads ten miles west of Fredericksburg and four miles south of the junction of the Rapidan and Rappahannock, was one of the most successful flanking maneuvers of the war. Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker of the Union devised a plan very similar to the flanking movement introduced by his predecessor, Ambrose Burnside, in hopes of defeating Confederates General Robert E. Lee, who made intelligent and judicious use of fieldworks at Chancellorsville.

This book is first and foremost a history of northern German Americans during and after the battle of Chancellorsville. Thus, it is a work of both ethnic and Civil War history, but it is more firmly rooted in the latter. Its goal is to create a greater understanding of the United States' largest ethnic group during the Civil War by carefully examining the event that proved most pivotal to it. The book analyzes how well the German regiments in the battle actually performed by reconstructing their actions through the eyes of those who fought. It determines the extent of the Anglo–American criticism that followed the battle, and ascertains if it was justified. Most importantly, the book documents the German–American reactions to that criticism and how it affected the Germans' thinking and behavior later in the war, and even in the postwar period. Embedded in that analysis is the larger question of whether or not the Civil War helped to assimilate the German-born immigrants who lived and fought through it.

This chapter presents the letters written by Thomas Henry Carter to his wife Susan between January 20 and June 25, 1863. In these letters, Carter talks about how the opposing armies settled into winter quarters on opposite sides of the Rappahannock River following the Battle of Fredericksburg; the changes in Carter's King William Artillery in the first half of February, including the departure of Major General D. H. Hill to assume command of Confederate forces in North Carolina; Brigadier General William Nelson Pendleton's reorganization of the artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia; Hill's request to Carter to serve as his artillery chief, which the latter refused; the Battle of Chancellorsville on the Orange Turnpike; the confrontation between Stonewall Jackson and Major General Joseph Hooker; and Robert E. Lee's decision to invade the North for the second time.