Fredericksburg I

Fought from December 11 through 15 in 1862, the Battle of Fredericksburg took place in and around the Virginia town of the same name, part of the Eastern Theater during the American Civil War. Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside led the Union Army of the Potomac against Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, and the clash featured doomed Union charges on December 13 straight into fortified Confederate positions. Soldiers threw themselves against what history would later call the "sunken wall," a defensive feature on the high ground above the town. Few engagements of the war produced such lopsided results, as Union losses ran more than double those on the Confederate side. When a visitor to the scene spoke with President Abraham Lincoln afterward, he called what he witnessed a "butchery."

Burnside's original scheme called for crossing the Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg in mid-November, then pushing quickly toward Richmond, the Confederate capital, before Lee could intervene. The plan hinged on pontoon bridges arriving on schedule, but delays gave Lee time to position his forces and block the river crossings. Once Union engineers finally got the bridges built and troops crossed under enemy fire, fighting broke out within the town itself on December 11 and 12. From there, Union forces readied themselves to strike Confederate lines both south of town and along Marye's Heights, a heavily defended ridge just to the west.

When December 13 arrived, Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin's Left Grand Division managed to break through the southern flank held by Confederate Lt. Gen. Stonewall Jackson's first line, though the breakthrough did not hold and his men were eventually pushed back. Meanwhile, Burnside sent the Right and Center Grand Divisions, under major generals Edwin V. Sumner and Joseph Hooker, forward again and again against Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's men entrenched on Marye's Heights. Every assault failed, and each cost the Union dearly in men. Two days later, on December 15, Burnside pulled his army back across the river, marking yet another unsuccessful Union effort in that theater of the war.

Background

By the autumn of 1862, political pressure weighed heavily on President Abraham Lincoln, who felt he needed a clear military success to keep public faith in his administration from eroding. Confederate forces had pushed into Kentucky and Maryland that fall, and though both incursions had been repelled, the armies responsible remained whole and still dangerous. Seeking momentum, Lincoln pressed Major General Ulysses S. Grant to move on the Confederate bastion at Vicksburg, Mississippi. He also swapped out Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell for Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, wanting a more forceful Union posture in Tennessee. When this change failed to spur Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan into decisive action, Lincoln, on November 5, ordered his removal from command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan had checked Lee's forces at Antietam in Maryland, yet he neither crushed Lee's army nor chased it back into Virginia with the speed Lincoln wanted.

Command fell next to Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, who led the IX Corps. He had built a name for himself running independent operations earlier that year along the North Carolina coast, and unlike McClellan, he showed no signs of political aspiration. Still, Burnside doubted his own fitness for such a large command and initially balked at the offer. He agreed only after learning that McClellan's removal was certain regardless, and that the alternative candidate was Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, a man he neither liked nor trusted. Burnside took command on November 7.

Pushed by Lincoln and by general-in-chief Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, Burnside drew up plans for a late-autumn campaign, informing Halleck of his intentions on November 9. His strategy hinged on speed and misdirection. He intended to mass his troops openly near Warrenton, giving the impression of a strike toward Culpeper Court House, Orange Court House, or Gordonsville, then swiftly redirect southeast across the Rappahannock to Fredericksburg while Lee remained uncertain of his true target. Simultaneously, Union forces would push rapidly toward Richmond along the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad heading south from Fredericksburg. Burnside favored this route out of concern that a direct southern advance from Warrenton would leave him vulnerable to a flank strike from Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, whose corps then sat in the Shenandoah Valley below Winchester. He also judged the Orange and Alexandria Railroad capable of sustaining his supply needs. His thinking drew partly on groundwork McClellan had laid just before losing command; aware that Lee held the O&A blocked, McClellan had eyed a Fredericksburg approach and sent a small cavalry detachment under Captain Ulric Dahlgren to scout the RF&P line. As Burnside began building a supply depot at Falmouth near Fredericksburg, Lincoln's administration spent considerable time weighing the merits of the plan, which departed from the president's preferred approach of pushing south along the O&A directly against Lee's army rather than aiming at Richmond itself. Lincoln gave grudging approval on November 14, warning Burnside to move with haste, plainly skeptical that Lee would behave as Burnside expected.

Union troops set out on November 15, with the leading elements reaching Falmouth by November 17. From there, Burnside's careful planning unraveled. Pontoon bridges meant to allow a swift crossing of the Rappahannock had been ordered, but bureaucratic delays kept them from arriving on schedule. Burnside had first requested the pontoon equipment, along with numerous other supplies, on November 7, the same day he outlined his plan to Halleck. That request reached Brig. Gen. George Washington Cullum, chief of staff in Washington, on November 9. The plan called for the pontoon trains to travel to Falmouth by both water and land routes. By November 14, the 50th New York Engineers noted the pontoons were prepared for transport, lacking only the 270 horses required to haul them. Burnside remained

Battle

Before daylight on December 11, Union engineers set to work assembling six pontoon bridges: two just north of the town's center, one at the southern edge of town, and three more downstream near where Deep Run meets the Rappahannock. Those building the span directly opposite the city faced brutal fire from Confederate marksmen, most of them from Brig. Gen. William Barksdale's Mississippi brigade, which held the town's defenses. Union gunners tried to drive off these sharpshooters, yet with 150 cannon firing, the effort accomplished little since the defenders were sheltered in house cellars. It took Burnside's artillery chief, Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt, to persuade him that infantry should be ferried across in pontoon boats to establish a foothold and clear out the riflemen. Col. Norman J. Hall offered his brigade for the task. Burnside then hesitated, telling Hall within earshot of his troops that the crossing would likely mean death for most who attempted it. Only after the soldiers answered with three cheers did Burnside agree to proceed. The bombardment meant to prepare the way opened at 3:00 p.m., and 135 men from the 7th Michigan and 19th Massachusetts squeezed into small boats, with the 20th Massachusetts following shortly. The crossing succeeded, and the men fanned out in a skirmish line to root out the defenders. Though several Confederates gave themselves up, combat dragged on street by street even as the engineers finished their bridges. Sumner's Right Grand Division started crossing at 4:30 p.m., though most of his troops would not get across until December 12. Hooker's Center Grand Division made its crossing on the 13th, using bridges at both the northern and southern points.

What followed, as Sumner's infantry and artillery from across the river cleared the town's buildings, marked the first large scale urban combat in the war's history and in the nation's. Union batteries poured more than 5,000 shells into Fredericksburg and the ridges beyond it. By evening, four Union brigades held the town, and they plundered it with a viciousness the conflict had not yet witnessed. Lee was outraged by this conduct, likening the destruction to that wrought by the ancient Vandals. Confederate soldiers, many of them Virginia natives, shared his anger, and numerous Union men were equally dismayed by what had been done to the town. Despite the scale of the violence, civilian deaths remained remarkably few; historian George Rable puts the figure at no more than four.

South of the city, Franklin's Left Grand Division crossed with far less drama. Five batteries of Union artillery kept sniper fire mostly suppressed while engineers finished both bridges there by 11:00 a.m. on December 11. Franklin received orders at 4:00 p.m. to send his whole force over, but darkness fell before more than one brigade made it across. The crossing continued at daybreak and wrapped up by 1:00 p.m. on the 12th. Early on the 13th, Jackson called back the divisions of Jubal Early and D.H. Hill from their downriver posts to consolidate his main line south of town.

Burnside's spoken instructions on December 12 called for Franklin, with Hooker's support, to deliver the main blow on the southern flank while Sumner made a lesser push in the north. But the written orders that followed on the 13th left his subordinates puzzled. At 5:00 p.m. on the 12th, during a brief visit to inspect the southern flank, Franklin and his officers urged Burnside to issue clear instructions for a morning assault so they could organize their men overnight. Burnside put them off, and the order did not reach Franklin until between 7:15 and 7:45 the next morning. Its contents surprised him. Instead of directing the entire 60,000 man grand division forward, it told Franklin merely to hold most of his men in place while sending "a division at least" to take Prospect Hill near Hamilton's Crossing; Sumner, meanwhile, was to push one division up Telegraph Road through the city, with both wings ready to commit fully if needed. Burnside apparently believed these limited thrusts might unnerve Lee into pulling back.

Aftermath

Celebration swept across the Confederacy in the wake of this triumph. Richmond's Examiner called it a crushing blow against the invading forces and a magnificent win for those defending sacred territory. Lee himself, ordinarily a man of restraint, appeared transformed according to the Charleston Mercury, which portrayed him as elated, nearly overwhelmed with emotion, and eager to embrace anyone who came to see him. That same paper declared that Lee understood warfare thoroughly and that his army had never yet learned the meaning of defeat.

Despite this widespread joy, Lee himself felt little satisfaction. He would later reflect that although a battle had been won at Fredericksburg with heavy losses inflicted on the opposing side in both soldiers and supplies, the public's excitement contrasted sharply with his own gloom. Nothing of substance had truly been gained, he admitted; not a single foot of territory had changed hands, and the enemy would have no trouble replacing its fallen troops. As for the destroyed equipment, Lee suspected it might even work to the Union's advantage, since it would simply create profit opportunities for war contractors.

Sentiment in Union territory could not have been more different. Both the military leadership and Lincoln faced fierce condemnation from journalists and politicians alike. The Cincinnati Commercial observed that rarely had soldiers displayed such courage while their commanders showed such poor judgment as had been evident that day. Radical Republican senator Zachariah Chandler characterized the president as weak and unsuited to the crisis, accusing incompetent or treacherous generals of squandering time and precious lives through indecisive engagements and needless delays. After touring the battlefield himself, Pennsylvania's governor Andrew Curtin came to the White House and informed Lincoln bluntly that what had occurred was not combat but slaughter. According to Curtin, the president grew devastated upon hearing this account, reaching a state of agitation that verged on madness. Lincoln himself confessed that if any place existed worse than hell, he currently occupied it.

Conditions on the western front offered no relief either. Grant's Army of the Tennessee remained stalled in Mississippi, unable to breach the formidable defenses of Vicksburg. Meanwhile Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland had clashed with Bragg's Army of Tennessee in the brutal, indecisive Battle of Stones River. Though technically recorded as a Union success since Bragg withdrew afterward and ceded the field, the fighting exacted more than thirteen thousand casualties combined and left both armies so badly damaged that neither could resume active campaigning until summer arrived. Burnside himself lost his command a month later, following a botched effort to remove certain subordinates and the embarrassing collapse of his January offensive, remembered as the "Mud March."