Battle of Fredericksburg

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Fredericksburg, fought from December 11 to 15 of 1862, produced one of the most lopsided casualty counts of the entire American Civil War. A visitor to the killing fields described it not as a battle but as a "butchery," and when Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin relayed that word to Abraham Lincoln, the president was said to have reached a state of nervous excitement bordering on insanity. Lincoln himself wrote, "If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it."

  At the center of this catastrophe was a single four-foot stone wall along a sunken road on a ridge called Marye's Heights. Confederate artillery commander Lt. Col. Edward Porter Alexander told General James Longstreet that a chicken could not live on the open ground below that wall once his guns opened. He was right. Seven Union divisions would be sent forward in fourteen separate charges, and not one of them broke through.

  How did more than 100,000 Union soldiers end up pinned against a defended ridgeline they could not take? The answer stretches back to a political crisis in Washington, a plan that depended on speed, and a fatal wait for pontoon bridges that arrived too late.

• 2. Lincoln's Desperate Gamble

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  In November of 1862, Abraham Lincoln was watching his war effort unravel on multiple fronts. Confederate armies had invaded Kentucky and Maryland earlier that fall, and though both incursions had been turned back, those armies remained intact. The Northern public was losing patience, and Lincoln needed to demonstrate progress before confidence in his administration collapsed entirely.

  His solution was to replace Major General George B. McClellan, who had stopped Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Antietam but had failed to pursue Lee's retreating army with sufficient aggression. On November 5, Lincoln issued orders removing McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. The replacement he chose was Major General Ambrose Burnside, commander of the IX Corps.

  Burnside had earned a reputation through successful independent operations earlier that year in coastal North Carolina. Unlike McClellan, he showed no apparent political ambitions. He was also deeply reluctant. He felt unqualified for army-level command and objected when the position was offered. He accepted only when it was made clear that McClellan would be replaced regardless, and that the alternative choice was Major General Joseph Hooker, whom Burnside disliked and distrusted. Burnside assumed command on November 7.

  The plan Burnside communicated to general-in-chief Major General Henry W. Halleck on November 9 relied on speed and deception. He would visibly concentrate his army near Warrenton, feigning movement toward Culpeper Court House or Gordonsville, then rapidly shift southeast to cross the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg and race down the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad toward the Confederate capital before Lee could react. Lincoln reluctantly approved the plan on November 14, but he cautioned Burnside to move with great speed, doubting that Lee would be caught off guard.

• 3. The Bridges That Didn't Come

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  The Union Army began marching on November 15, and the first elements reached Falmouth, just across the river from Fredericksburg, on November 17. But Burnside's plan had already begun to unravel. He had ordered pontoon bridges sent forward in time for a rapid crossing, and that order had gone badly wrong.

  Burnside had first requisitioned the pontoon bridging on November 7 when he detailed his plan to Halleck. The request reached Brigadier General George Washington Cullum, the chief of staff in Washington, on November 9. The bridges were supposed to move by both river and overland routes to Falmouth. On November 14, the 50th New York Engineers reported the pontoons were ready to move, except for a shortage of 270 horses. Unknown to Burnside, most of the bridging was still sitting on the upper Potomac. Communications between his staff engineer Cyrus B. Comstock and Engineer Brigade commander Daniel P. Woodbury show that Burnside had simply assumed the bridges were already en route based on orders from November 6.

  The boats and equipment for only a single bridge arrived at Falmouth on November 25, far too late for a crossing without opposition. Major General Edwin V. Sumner had urged Burnside to cross immediately when only a token Confederate force of 500 men held the town. Burnside held back, anxious about autumn rains making fording points unusable and worried that Sumner could be cut off.

  Lee, who had initially expected Burnside to beat him across the river, watched the delay and moved decisively. By November 23, Longstreet's corps was positioned on Marye's Heights west of the town. Lee sent for Stonewall Jackson on November 26, and Jackson had already anticipated the call, beginning forced marches from Winchester on November 22, covering as many as 20 miles a day. Jackson arrived at Lee's headquarters on November 29. The full complement of bridges finally arrived at the end of the month, but by then Jackson was present and Longstreet was building strong defenses. Two weeks of administrative fumbling had transformed a promising offensive into an assault against a fully prepared enemy.

• 4. Crossing Under Fire

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  Before dawn on December 11, Union engineers began assembling six pontoon bridges, two just north of the town center, one on the southern end, and three farther south near the confluence of the Rappahannock and Deep Run. The bridge directly across from the city immediately ran into trouble. Confederate sharpshooters from the Mississippi brigade of Brigadier General William Barksdale, positioned in cellars, poured fire onto the engineers. Union artillery tried to suppress them with 150 guns, but the sharpshooters in the cellars could not be dislodged.

  Burnside's artillery commander, Brigadier General Henry J. Hunt, finally convinced him to send infantry across in pontoon boats to clear the riflemen. Colonel Norman J. Hall volunteered his brigade. Burnside, suddenly reluctant, lamented to Hall in front of his men that "the effort meant death to most of those who should undertake the voyage." His men responded to Hall's call with three cheers, and Burnside relented. At 3:00 p.m., 135 infantrymen from the 7th Michigan and the 19th Massachusetts crowded into the small boats, followed soon after by the 20th Massachusetts. They crossed successfully and spread into a skirmish line, clearing the sharpshooters street by street through what became the first major urban combat in American history.

  Union gunners sent more than 5,000 shells against the town and the ridges to the west. By nightfall, four brigades occupied Fredericksburg, which they looted with a fury that had not been seen in the war up to that point. Lee compared the destruction to the depredations of the ancient Vandals. Civilian casualties were unusually low given the widespread violence; historian George Rable estimates no more than four civilian deaths. South of the city, Franklin's Left Grand Division crossed with less drama. Both bridges there were completed by 11:00 a.m. and crossings resumed at dawn on December 12, completed by 1:00 p.m. The stage for December 13 was set.

• 5. The Gap in Jackson's Line

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  December 13 began cold and overcast, with a dense fog blanketing the ground so thick the armies could not see each other. Burnside's plan called for Major General William B. Franklin's Left Grand Division to deliver the main assault on the Confederate southern flank, supported by Hooker, while Sumner made a secondary attack from the north. But Burnside's written orders, which did not reach Franklin until 7:15 or 7:45 in the morning, were not what Franklin expected.

  Instead of ordering the entire grand division of nearly 60,000 men forward, Burnside told Franklin to send "a division at least" to seize the high ground around Hamilton's Crossing, known as Prospect Hill. Franklin chose to interpret this very conservatively. Major General John F. Reynolds selected his smallest division, about 4,500 men under Major General George G. Meade, to lead the attack, with Brigadier General John Gibbon's division in support.

  Meade's men began moving at 8:30 a.m. Around 10:30 a.m., the fog began to lift, and they started taking enfilading fire from Major John Pelham's Virginia Horse Artillery. Pelham started with two cannons but continued with only one after the second was disabled by counter-battery fire. When J.E.B. Stuart offered Pelham permission to withdraw from his exposed position, Pelham responded, "Tell the General I can hold my ground." General Lee, watching the exchange, remarked about the 24-year-old Pelham, "It is glorious to see such courage in one so young."

  Meade pushed forward around 1:00 p.m. and discovered an unforeseen flaw in Jackson's defensive line. In A.P. Hill's section, a 600-yard gap existed between the brigades of Brigadier Generals James H. Lane and James J. Archer, filled with swampy ground and thick underbrush. Meade's 1st Brigade entered the gap, climbed the railroad embankment, and struck Lane's brigade in the flank. His 3rd Brigade turned left and hit Archer's flank. Thousands of Meade's men reached the top of the ridge and ran into Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg's brigade, many of whose men had stacked their arms while sheltering from Union artillery and were not expecting to be attacked. Gregg, partially deaf, could not hear the approaching Federals or their bullets. He rode prominently in front of his lines, trying to stop his men from firing on what he mistook for fleeing Confederate troops. A bullet struck his spine and fatally wounded him; he died two days later. His brigade was completely routed.

  The breakthrough lasted only minutes. Confederate reserves under Jubal Early and William Taliaferro counterattacked, Meade's men began receiving fire from three sides, and the Union troops fell back in disorder. The only Confederate regimental flag captured and retained by the Army of the Potomac in the entire battle was taken here: the flag of the 19th Georgia, seized by the adjutant of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves. Franklin had roughly 20,000 men standing idle in reserve, but he refused repeated orders to advance them, and the breakthrough was lost.

• 6. Slaughter at the Stone Wall

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  About 600 yards west of Fredericksburg sat a low ridge known as Marye's Heights, rising 40 to 50 feet above the plain. Near its crest ran a narrow lane in a slight cut, the Telegraph Road, shielded by a four-foot stone wall enhanced with log breastworks. Confederate Major General Lafayette McLaws had about 2,000 men on the front line there, with an additional 7,000 in reserve on the crest and behind the ridge. Artillery provided nearly uninterrupted coverage of the plain below.

  The approach from the city was difficult. A canal stood about 200 yards west of the town, crossed by only three narrow bridges, which would force attacking troops to funnel into columns before spreading back into battle lines. Burnside originally intended the assault on Marye's Heights as a secondary effort, expecting Franklin's attack in the south to be decisive. He ordered Sumner to send "a division or more" against the heights.

  Brigadier General William H. French's division went first, with Brigadier General Nathan Kimball's brigade moving around noon. They advanced through heavy artillery fire, crossed the canal, formed in line with fixed bayonets behind a shallow bluff, and moved up the muddy slope until they were cut down at about 125 yards from the stone wall. Some soldiers reached within 40 yards. Kimball was severely wounded and his brigade suffered 25% casualties. The brigades that followed suffered casualty rates of almost 50%.

  Next came Brigadier General Winfield S. Hancock's division. His Irish Brigade under Brigadier General Thomas F. Meagher, carrying outdated Springfield muskets, could not deliver an effective volley until within a hundred yards of the enemy. Of the 1,200 Irishmen who charged, 545 were killed or wounded. In Hancock's final brigade, Colonel Nelson A. Miles suggested to his commander, Brigadier General John C. Caldwell, that a concerted bayonet charge might carry the works rather than the suicidal formation of marching, firing, and halting to reload. Caldwell refused. Miles was shot in the throat as he led his men to within 40 yards of the wall.

  Longstreet reinforced his line so that four ranks of infantrymen stood behind the stone wall. When Lee expressed concern about the massing Union troops breaking through, Longstreet replied, "General, if you put every man on the other side of the Potomac on that field to approach me over the same line, and give me plenty of ammunition, I will kill them all before they reach my line."

  Seven Union divisions went forward in fourteen individual charges. All failed. The Union burial party found 918 dead on the slopes, many stripped naked by Confederates who had come down during the night for their shoes and uniforms. Confederate losses at Marye's Heights totaled around 1,200. Hancock's division alone suffered 2,032 casualties, the highest of any Union division in the battle. That night Burnside attempted to blame his subordinates for the disaster, but they argued the fault was entirely his.

• 7. Aftermath and the Wound That Wouldn't Close

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  The Union army suffered 12,653 casualties in total: 1,284 killed, 9,600 wounded, and 1,769 captured or missing. The Confederate army lost 5,377. On the northern flank alone, about eight Union soldiers fell for every Confederate. Burnside was relieved of command a month later, after an attempt to purge subordinates from the army and the humiliating failure of a subsequent advance that became known as the Mud March in January.

  Lee's reaction was more complicated than his army's jubilation suggested. In a letter written afterward, he noted that at Fredericksburg "we gained a battle, inflicting very severe loss on the enemy in men and material," but that he was personally "much depressed." He wrote that they had gained not a foot of ground, that the enemy could easily replace its losses, and that the destruction of Union material might actually benefit the North by giving contractors the opportunity to supply better equipment.

  In the North, the recriminations came swiftly. The Cincinnati Commercial wrote that "it can hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor or generals to manifest less judgment." Senator Zachariah Chandler called Lincoln "too weak for the occasion." Lincoln himself wrote, "If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it."

  One small act of mercy amid the carnage became a lasting story. Confederate Sergeant Richard Rowland Kirkland of Company G, 2nd South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, was stationed at the stone wall after the fighting ended. Throughout the cold night of December 13, he was appalled by the cries of wounded Union soldiers on the field. After obtaining permission from Brigadier General Joseph B. Kershaw, Kirkland gathered canteens and walked out into the open, in broad daylight and without a cease-fire or flag of truce (Kershaw refused that request), giving water to wounded Union men. Union soldiers held their fire when they understood his intent. Kirkland was nicknamed the "Angel of Marye's Heights" and is memorialized by a statue by Felix de Weldon in the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The account was first recorded in 1880, and details conflict with multiple after-action reports.

  On the night of December 14, the Aurora Borealis appeared in skies unusual for that latitude. One witness wrote that "the whole sky was a ruddy glow as if from an enormous conflagration, but marked by the darting rays peculiar to the Northern light." Soldiers recorded the sight in diaries and letters, finding in the strange light some wordless commentary on the frozen dead and the unfinished war along the Rappahannock. Burnside crossed back over the river the next morning, December 15, ending the campaign. The Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, established in 1927 and transferred to the National Park Service in 1933, now covers more than 8,300 acres across four Civil War battlefields, including the 208-acre Slaughter Pen Farm where Meade's troops briefly broke Jackson's line and where five Medal of Honor recipients earned their citations on the 13th of December 1862.