114th Pennsylvania: The Third Day at Chancellorsville
Virginia
This monument marks the battle line held by the one hundred fourteenth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers on May third, eighteen sixty-three, during the Battle of Chancellorsville. On that day, the regiment suffered heavy losses. The regiment was known as Collis' Zouaves, after its founder Charles Collis, an Irish born Philadelphia lawyer, and its men wore red fezzes and madder red trousers made from cloth Collis imported from France.
Two months after Chancellorsville, at Gettysburg, the regiment lost one hundred fifty five of three hundred twelve men defending the Peach Orchard. Veterans of the regiment put up this monument in eighteen ninety eight. Chancellorsville was Robert E.
Lee's most celebrated tactical victory, but it came at an extraordinary cost, including the accidental wounding of Stonewall Jackson by his own men the evening before. Jackson died eight days later. For Union regiments like the one hundred fourteenth Pennsylvania, Chancellorsville was a painful defeat: outnumbered and outmaneuvered, the Army of the Potomac was forced to retreat back across the Rappahannock River.
The regiment went on to serve through the rest of the war, including Gettysburg two months later. Monuments like this one, placed along the actual battle lines, form one of the densest concentrations of Civil War commemoration in the United States, marking ground where tens of thousands of men fought within just a few miles.
