Fredericksburg II

On May 3, 1863, fighting broke out in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in an engagement remembered under two names: the Second Battle of Fredericksburg and the Second Battle of Marye's Heights. This clash formed a portion of the larger Chancellorsville Campaign during the American Civil War.

Background

On May 1, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee assigned Jubal A. Early the task of holding Fredericksburg, while he took the bulk of the Army of Northern Virginia westward to confront the primary Union advance under Joseph Hooker at Chancellorsville, where four corps of the Army of the Potomac were engaged. For this defensive assignment, Early commanded his own division, William Barksdale's brigade detached from McLaws' division, and artillery pieces drawn from the reserve, with support from Brigadier General William Pendleton, who oversaw that reserve artillery. When Cadmus Wilcox's brigade joined on May 3, Early's total rose to 12,000 troops and 45 guns, most of them stationed south of the town.

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Aftermath

Losses on the Confederate side reached 700 men along with four cannons. Early pulled his division back two miles southward, and Wilcox fell back to the west, which slowed down Sedgwick's progress. Once word of the Confederate loss reached him, Lee set two divisions in motion eastward to block Sedgwick.

In the wake of the campaign, a dispute broke out between Early and Barksdale, sparked by a newspaper letter Early had penned that Barksdale felt disparaged his brigade. The two kept quarreling until Lee finally intervened and told them to stop.

On his end, Sedgwick had suffered 1,100 casualties in the fighting. He briefly moved to chase after Early's retreating men, but then shifted course, following the previous day's orders and heading west on the Plank Road to link up with Hooker's forces at Chancellorsville. Meanwhile, Gibbon's division stayed behind in Fredericksburg to hold the town.