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Battle of Fredericksburg | HearLore
— Ch. 1 · Lincoln's Pressure And Burnside's Burden —
Battle of Fredericksburg.
~12 min read · Ch. 1 of 8
President Abraham Lincoln needed to demonstrate the success of the Union war effort before the Northern public lost confidence in his administration. Confederate armies had been on the move earlier in the fall, invading Kentucky and Maryland. Although each had been turned back, those armies remained intact and capable of further action. Lincoln urged Major General Ulysses S. Grant to advance against the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi. He replaced Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell with Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, hoping for a more aggressive posture against the Confederates in Tennessee. On November 5, seeing that his replacement of Buell had not stimulated Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan into action, Lincoln issued orders to replace McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac.
McClellan had stopped General Robert E. Lee's forces at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland but had not been able to destroy Lee's army. Nor did he pursue Lee back into Virginia aggressively enough for Lincoln. McClellan's replacement was Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, the commander of the IX Corps. Burnside had established a reputation as an independent commander, with successful operations earlier that year in coastal North Carolina. Unlike McClellan, he had no apparent political ambitions. However, he felt unqualified for army-level command and objected when offered the position. He accepted only when it was made clear to him that McClellan would be replaced in any event and that a choice for command was Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, whom Burnside disliked and distrusted. Burnside assumed command on November 7.
Bungled Bridges And Delayed Orders
Burnside planned to cross the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg in mid-November and race to the Confederate capital of Richmond before Lee's army could stop him. Burnside needed to receive the necessary pontoon bridges in time, and Lee moved his army to block the crossings. The Union Army began marching on November 15, and the first elements arrived in Falmouth on November 17. Burnside's plan quickly went awry because administrative bungling caused the bridges to not arrive on time.
Burnside first requisitioned the pontoon bridging along with many other provisions on November 7 when he detailed his plan to Halleck. The plan was sent to the attention of Brig. Gen. George Washington Cullum, the chief of staff in Washington, received on November 9. Plans called for both riverine and overland movement of the pontoon trains to Falmouth. On November 14, the 50th New York Engineers reported the pontoons were ready to move, except for a lack of the 270 horses needed to move them. Unknown to Burnside, most of the bridging was still on the upper Potomac. Communications between Burnside's staff engineer Cyrus B. Comstock and the Engineer Brigade commander Daniel P. Woodbury indicate that Burnside had assumed the bridging was en route to Washington based on orders given on November 6.
The boats and equipment for a single pontoon bridge arrived at Falmouth on November 25, much too late to enable the Army of the Potomac to cross the river without opposition. Burnside still had an opportunity, however, because by then he was facing only half of Lee's army, not yet dug in. If he acted quickly, he might have been able to attack Longstreet and defeat him before Jackson arrived. Once again he squandered his opportunity. The full complement of bridges arrived at the end of the month, but by this time Jackson was present and Longstreet was preparing strong defenses.
Street Fighting And Foggy Crossings
Union engineers began to assemble six pontoon bridges before dawn on December 11, two just north of the town center, a third on the southern end of town, and three farther south, near the confluence of the Rappahannock and Deep Run. The engineers constructing the bridge directly across from the city came under punishing fire from Confederate sharpshooters, primarily from the Mississippi brigade of Brig. Gen. William Barksdale, in command of the town defenses. Union artillery attempted to dislodge the sharpshooters, but their positions in the cellars of houses rendered the fire from 150 guns mostly ineffective.
Eventually Burnside's artillery commander, Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt, convinced him to send infantry landing parties over in the pontoon boats to secure a small bridgehead and rout the sharpshooters. Col. Norman J. Hall volunteered his brigade for this assignment. Burnside suddenly turned reluctant, lamenting to Hall in front of his men that "the effort meant death to most of those who should undertake the voyage." When his men responded to Hall's request with three cheers, Burnside relented. At 3:00 p.m., the Union artillery began a preparatory bombardment and 135 infantrymen from the 7th Michigan and the 19th Massachusetts crowded into the small boats. They crossed successfully and spread out in a skirmish line to clear the sharpshooters.
The clearing of the city buildings by Sumner's infantry and by artillery fire from across the river began the first major urban combat of both the war and American history. Union gunners sent more than 5,000 shells against the town and the ridges to the west. By nightfall, four brigades of Union troops occupied the town, which they looted with a fury that had not been seen in the war up to that point. This behavior enraged Lee, who compared their depredations with those of the ancient Vandals. The destruction also angered the Confederate troops, many of whom were native Virginians. Many on the Union side were also shocked by the destruction inflicted on Fredericksburg. Civilian casualties were unusually low given the widespread violence; George Rable estimates no more than four civilian deaths.
Meade's Flank And The Broken Line
December 13 began cold and overcast. A dense fog blanketed the ground and made it impossible for the armies to see each other. Franklin ordered his I Corps commander, Maj. Gen. John F. Reynolds, to select a division for the attack. Reynolds chose his smallest division, about 4,500 men commanded by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, and assigned Brig. Gen. John Gibbon's division to support Meade's attack. His reserve division, under Maj. Gen. Abner Doubleday, was to face south and protect the left flank between the Richmond Road and the river.
Meade's division began moving out at 8:30 a.m., with Gibbon following behind. At around 10:30 a.m., the fog started lifting. They moved parallel to the river initially, turning right to face the Richmond Road, where they began to be struck by enfilading fire from the Virginia Horse Artillery under Major John Pelham. Pelham started with two cannons, a 12-pounder Napoleon smoothbore and a rifled Blakely, but continued with only one after the latter was disabled by counter-battery fire. J.E.B. Stuart sent word to Pelham that he should feel free to withdraw from his dangerous position at any time, to which Pelham responded, "Tell the General I can hold my ground." The Iron Brigade (formerly Gibbon's command, but now led by Brig. Gen. Solomon Meredith) was sent out to deal with the Confederate horse artillery.
Jackson's force of about 35,000 remained concealed on the wooded ridge to Meade's front. His formidable defensive line had an unforeseen flaw. In A.P. Hill's division's line, a triangular patch of the woods that extended beyond the railroad was swampy and covered with thick underbrush and the Confederates had left a 600-yard gap there between the brigades of Brig. Gens. James H. Lane and James J. Archer. Brig. Gen. Maxcy Gregg's brigade stood about a quarter mile behind the gap. Meade's 1st Brigade entered the gap, climbed the railroad embankment, and turned right into the underbrush, striking Lane's brigade in the flank.
The Sunken Road And The Stone Wall
About 600 yards to the west of Fredericksburg was the low ridge known as Marye's Heights, rising 40, 50 feet above the plain. Near the crest of the portion of the ridge comprising Marye's Hill and Willis Hill, a narrow lane in a slight cut, the Telegraph Road, known after the battle as the Sunken Road, was protected by a 4-foot stone wall, enhanced in places with log breastworks and abatis, making it a perfect infantry defensive position. Confederate Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws initially had about 2,000 men on the front line of Marye's Heights and there were an additional 7,000 men in reserve on the crest and behind the ridge.
Massed artillery provided almost uninterrupted coverage of the plain below. General Longstreet had been assured by his artillery commander, Lt. Col. Edward Porter Alexander, "General, we cover that ground now so well that we will comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it." The fog lifted from the town around 10 a.m. and Sumner gave his order to advance an hour later. French's brigade under Brig. Gen. Nathan Kimball began to move around noon. They advanced slowly through heavy artillery fire, crossed the canal in columns over the narrow bridges, and formed in line, with fixed bayonets, behind the protection of a shallow bluff.
In perfect line of battle, they advanced up the muddy slope until they were cut down at about 125 yards from the stone wall by repeated rifle volleys. Some soldiers were able to get as close as 40 yards, but having suffered severe casualties from both the artillery and infantry fire, the survivors clung to the ground. Kimball was severely wounded during the assault, and his brigade suffered 25% casualties. French's brigades under Col. John W. Andrews and Col. Oliver H. Palmer followed, with casualty rates of almost 50%. Seven Union divisions had been sent in, generally one brigade at a time, for a total of fourteen individual charges, all of which failed, costing from 6,000 to 8,000 casualties.
The Angel And The Aurora
Testament to the extent of the carnage and suffering during the battle was the story of Richard Rowland Kirkland, a Confederate Army sergeant with Company G, 2nd South Carolina Volunteer Infantry. Stationed at the stone wall by the sunken road below Marye's Heights, Kirkland had a close up view to the suffering and like so many others was appalled at the cries for help of the Union wounded throughout the cold winter night of the 13th of December 1862.
After obtaining permission from his commander, Brig. Gen. Joseph B. Kershaw, Kirkland gathered canteens and in broad daylight, without the benefit of a cease fire or a flag of truce (refused by Kershaw), provided water to numerous Union wounded lying on the field of battle. Union soldiers held their fire as it was obvious what Kirkland's intent was. Kirkland was nicknamed the "Angel of Marye's Heights" for these actions, and is memorialized with a statue by Felix de Weldon on the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park where he carried out his actions.
On the night of December 14, the Aurora Borealis made an appearance unusual for that latitude. One witness described that "the wonderful spectacle of the Aurora Borealis was seen in the Gulf States. The whole sky was a ruddy glow as if from an enormous conflagration, but marked by the darting rays peculiar to the Northern light." The event was noted in the diaries and letters of many soldiers at Fredericksburg, such as John W. Thompson, Jr., who wrote "Louisiana sent those famous cosmopolitan Zouaves called the Louisiana Tigers, and there were Florida troops who, undismayed in fire, stampeded the night after Fredericksburg, when the Aurora Borealis snapped and crackled over that field of the frozen dead hard by the Rappahannock..."
Butchery And The Long Shadow
The Union army suffered 12,653 casualties (1,284 killed, 9,600 wounded, 1,769 captured/missing). Two Union generals were mortally wounded: Brig. Gens. George D. Bayard and Conrad F. Jackson. The Confederate army lost 5,377 (608 killed, 4,116 wounded, 653 captured/missing), most of them in the early fighting on Jackson's front.
Reactions were opposite in the North, and both the Army and President Lincoln came under strong attacks from politicians and the press. The Cincinnati Commercial noted, "It can hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor or generals to manifest less judgment, than were perceptible on our side that day." Senator Zachariah Chandler, a Radical Republican, wrote, "The President is a weak man, too weak for the occasion, and those fool or traitor generals are wasting time and yet more precious blood in indecisive battles and delays." Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin visited the White House after a trip to the battlefield. He told the president, "It was not a battle, it was a butchery." Curtin reported that the president was "heart-broken at the recital, and soon reached a state of nervous excitement bordering on insanity." Lincoln himself wrote, "If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it."
Burnside was relieved of command a month later, after an attempt to purge some of his subordinates from the Army and the humiliating failure of his "Mud March" in January.
Preserving The Slaughter Pen
In March 2003, the Civil War Trust (a division of the American Battlefield Trust) announced the beginning of a $12 million national campaign to preserve the historic Slaughter Pen Farm, a key part of the Fredericksburg battlefield. The farm, known locally as the Pierson Tract, was the scene of bloody struggle on the 13th of December 1862. Over this ground Federal troops under Maj. Gen. George Meade and Brig. Gen. John Gibbon launched their assault against Lt. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's Confederates holding the southern portion of the Army of Northern Virginia's line at Fredericksburg.
Despite suffering enormous casualties the Federal troops under Meade were able to temporarily penetrate the Confederate line and for a time represented the North's best chance of winning the Battle of Fredericksburg. The fighting on this southern portion of the battlefield, later named the Slaughter Pen, produced 5,000 casualties and five Medal of Honor recipients. The Slaughter Pen Farm was considered to be the largest remaining unprotected part of the Fredericksburg battlefield. It is also the only place on the battlefield where a visitor can still follow the Union assault of December 13 from beginning to end.
Nearly all the other land associated with Union attacks at Fredericksburg, either on the southern end of the battlefield or in front of Marye's Heights, has been degraded by development. The $12 million acquisition of the Slaughter Pen Farm at the Fredericksburg battlefield has been called the most ambitious nonprofit battlefield acquisition in American history. In October 2006, the Department of the Interior awarded a $2 million grant based on the significance of the Slaughter Pen Farm. The money was provided through a U.S. Congressional appropriation from the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
The Battle of Fredericksburg took place on the 13th of December 1862. Union engineers began assembling pontoon bridges before dawn on December 11, and the main assault occurred during the day on December 13.
Who commanded the Union Army at the Battle of Fredericksburg?
Major General Ambrose Burnside commanded the Union Army at the Battle of Fredericksburg. He assumed command on November 7 after replacing Major General George B. McClellan.
What were the casualty numbers for the Union forces in the Battle of Fredericksburg?
The Union army suffered 12,653 casualties including 1,284 killed, 9,600 wounded, and 1,769 captured or missing. Two Union generals were mortally wounded: Brigadier Generals George D. Bayard and Conrad F. Jackson.
Where was the Slaughter Pen Farm located during the Battle of Fredericksburg?
The Slaughter Pen Farm is located about 600 yards west of Fredericksburg near Marye's Heights. It served as the scene of bloody struggle on the 13th of December 1862 where Federal troops under Maj. Gen. George Meade launched their assault against Confederate forces.
Why did the Union attack fail at Marye's Heights during the Battle of Fredericksburg?
The Union attack failed because Confederate artillery provided almost uninterrupted coverage of the plain below while infantry positions behind a 4-foot stone wall proved nearly impregnable. Seven Union divisions sent in fourteen individual charges all failed costing from 6,000 to 8,000 casualties.