v1.1.1 / chapter 36 of 93 / 01 sep 08 / greg goebel / public domain
* As December 1862 began, Ambrose Burnside prepared to move against Robert E. Lee in northern Virginia. Although Burnside's plans went wrong almost from the start, he refused to change his course, and the result was a disaster at Fredericksburg and one of the worst days in history of the US Army.
* The US Congress convened on 1 December 1862, opening with an extended Presidential address delivered by the Congressional clerk, Lincoln being too busy to deliver it personally. It was a long speech, almost 50,000 words, and covered a wide range of matters, a good many of them mundane and practical: new treaties had been signed with foreign governments; the Treasury was surprisingly running a small budget surplus; troubles with the Indian tribes on the frontiers suggested that further attention was needed on the matter; the Pacific Railway was being extended towards completion; the Department of Agriculture had been established; and so on, through half the message.
However dry such details might have seemed, they outlined one significant fact: while the Confederacy was strained to the limits of its resources to fight the Union, the US government was not only carrying on a military campaign against the rebel states with resources the Southerners could have barely dreamed of, but was continuing economic development and Westward expansion almost as if there no war at all. Any Confederates who realized the Union was fighting with one hand behind its back must've been very discouraged.
Then Lincoln moved on to a methodical discussion of the conflict, beginning with a description of the geography of that portion of America bounded by the Rockies in the West and the Alleghenies in the East, the Great Lakes and Canada to the North and the Cotton Belt to the South. This huge basin was a geographical unit, with its rivers emptying into the Mississippi running down its middle. It was, at the time, thinly populated and ready for great expansion of population and industry. To support this expansion, its citizens would need outlets to the Far East on the West Coast, to Latin America on the Gulf Coast, and to Europe and Africa on the East Coast. The Confederacy was a barrier to expansion, a temporary obstacle to a powerful movement of history that would sweep it away.
That temporary obstacle was based on the institution of slavery: "Without slavery the rebellion would never have existed; without slavery it could not continue." Lincoln saw as the solution his old plan of compensated emancipation. He explained in detail how the finances of such a measure would be arranged and concluded that they would be less costly than the continuation of the war, even in strictly monetary terms. Furthermore, the gradual emancipation of slaves would prevent the shock of a mass dislocation of the wholesale release into American society of a entire class of people for whom everything had been done by their masters to lock them into a state of poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance.
In closing, the President first apologized for any "undue earnestness" that might be perceived on his part and acknowledge that many in Congress were his olders and betters, and then challenged them to embrace the measures needed to obtain a better future for the country. He concluded:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history ... The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation ... in giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
END QUOTE
Unfortunately, peace, generosity, and justice -- except for the justice of a wrathful God -- were no longer the order of the day. Lincoln could appeal to sensibility all he liked, but the war's momentum was now unstoppable, crushing anyone who got in its way. A Massachusetts colonel down in Beaufort, South Carolina, wrote that the Federal purpose should be "fumigating [the rebels'] nests with the brimstone of an unmitigated Hell," and that the ultimate goal was "permanent domination ... They think we mean to take their Slaves. Bah! We must take their ports, their mines, their water power, the very soil they plough ... " Wild as such talk was, he was not alone in wanting the society and lifestyle of the Old South wiped from the face of the Earth. The slave power had tried to break up the United States of America, so such folk thought, and now it had to be wiped out completely.
Lincoln knew the war knew that restraining the chaos of the conflict was going to be difficult, but no matter how troublesome things seemed, he could always find a bit of humor as a comfort. The next day, 2 December, he met Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. He greeted her with: "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"
* In the meantime, while some angrily called for total and merciless war, on the banks of the Rappahannock Confederate and Yankee pickets were arranging little truces. They all knew they would have to fight sooner or later, but taking idle pot-shots at each other was senseless, mean, and to no one's benefit. There was considerable jeering across the water, but after a while quite a bit of friendly fraternization as well. There was also a little black-market trade, Southern tobacco for Yankee coffee, sugar, shoes. A nice Union coat was prized by the rebels as the cold December days drew on. In one place, the soldiers rigged a wire across the river and used a little ferry to send items of trade to each other. In other places, they made little rafts and sailboats to perform the task, or simply swam or waded across the river with a haversack. Officers generally looked the other way.
The Confederates were hungry, underclothed, and cold, but their morale was good and generally the hardships didn't seem to bother them much. When a good layer of snow fell on the night of 5 December and the temperature plunged, it was a trial for the Army of Northern Virginia, with one of every six of its soldiers lacking shoes, but many of the Southerners had never seen snow and were very much amazed at it.
Morale was not so good to the north of the river. In his previous commands, Burnside had scrupulously attended to the fundamental military duties of making sure his men were properly fed, clothed, equipped, and paid. As commander of the Army of the Potomac, he had no time for such things himself and expected his subordinates to take care of them without his supervision. Unfortunately, the leadership of that unlucky force was a mixed lot and the routine things were beginning to fall down. The condition of Burnside's soldiers, for whom vast sums were being spent to ensure that they had supplies beyond the imagination of their adversaries, was now rivaling the threadbare state of the rebels.
The camp at Falmouth, after having been churned over by an occupying army, was a field of mud, frozen at night, soggy by day, and everything was filthy and wretched. The discomfort was greatly increased by the fact that in the hasty march from Warrenton many regiments had left their tents and blankets behind. With logistics breaking down, replacement gear was slow to arrive, leaving men freezing and miserable at nights. Food was wretched as well, some regiments living on nothing but salt pork and hardtack. Fights broke out between regiments that had received food and supplies and those that had not. Most of the soldiers had not been paid for months.
As bad as all this was, the Army of the Potomac suffered from a worse problem: a collective perception, with a solid basis in experience, that their leadership was inept, and a belief that their efforts would be wasted. They had fought hard for months and had little to show for it but blood and pain. Despite this, they were still willing to fight, and if the war was quiet for the moment they were obviously going to get the opportunity to fight again very soon.
* There was one bright spot in this dreary picture, though it only made the rest of it seem even more absurd in comparison: the trains ran on time. Colonel Herman Haupt had extended the railroad to Falmouth with an efficiency that would have spared Ambrose Burnside a lot of trouble if the pontoon bridges had been handled in the same way.
The trains actually traveled by water for 35 miles (56 kilometers) of their trip. Haupt had come up with an ingenious scheme for moving the trains from Alexandria, where they arrived loaded with supplies from points north, to the Union supply base at Aquia Creek. He obtained pairs of coal barges, bound them side-by-side with long timbers, and laid railroad tracks on top of them. Two such "floats" could be loaded up at Alexandria with a complete train of sixteen cars in about an hour, with each float carrying eight cars. The floats could be towed downstream to Aquia Creek in about six hours and unloaded there in another hour, with the trains then steaming off to Falmouth.
Burnside understood the importance of the railroads and got along well with Haupt, who in turn observed: "General Burnside is one of the most reasonable and practical men I ever met." Haupt was skeptical of one of Burnside's requests, however. Burnside wanted 10 miles (16 kilometers) of railroad iron shipped up the Rappahannock in order to support the Army of the Potomac's movement south once Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia had been dealt with. The railroad bridge across the Rappahannock had been destroyed months before, and Haupt knew that without the bridge the railroad iron was of limited use. When the time came, Haupt's crews could repair the bridge quickly, and then the iron could be easily brought forward by rail.
Haupt still told Burnside that "it shall be done if you desire it." A minor matter, possibly, but it is worth noting that while the US Army could obtain ten miles of railroad iron and set it aside for a contingency, the Confederacy was hard-pressed to find the iron to repair ten miles of existing track. Herman Haupt could provide the rails, Burnside now had to provide the victory that would make them useful.
* Ambrose Burnside's first inclination towards dealing with the Confederates massed across the Rappahannock was to move downstream ten miles (16 kilometers) to a place called Skinker's Neck and send the Army of the Potomac across there. However, on 4 December, Federal gunboats that Burnside had called upstream to support the attack encountered rebel batteries placed along the shore, and the vessels were driven back downstream. Furthermore, Federal observers in Professor Lowe's balloons observed Confederate divisions, Jubal Early's and D.H. Hill's, across the river at that point.
Burnside jumped to the conclusion that Lee had guessed the Federals would move downstream and was concentrating forces there to meet them. Burnside then decided that a crossing at Fredericksburg was the best idea after all, since Lee had probably weakened his center by moving his forces down the river. Burnside reported his plans back to the War Department on 9 December, anxiously concluding with a direct plea to General Halleck: "The movement is so important that I feel anxious to be fortified by his approval. Please answer." To no surprise of anyone except possibly Burnside, Halleck said nothing.
Burnside's councils of war with his officers did nothing to relieve his anxiety, either. After the plan was explained, Brigadier General "Blinkey" French led three cheers for their commander, but then Burnside asked two officers what they thought of the plan. The first officer replied: "If you make the attack as contemplated, it will be the greatest slaughter of the war; there isn't infantry enough in our whole army to carry those heights if they are well defended." Burnside's shock and dismay at this response was magnified by the following comments of the second officer: "The carrying out of your plan will be murder, not warfare."
The logical holes in the plan were blindingly obvious. The Confederate position was naturally strong, and there was no real obstacle to Lee shifting his divisions to where they would be most needed. There was no way the Army of the Potomac could lay down pontoon bridges, cross the river, assemble on the other shore, and then begin the attack without giving the rebels all the time they needed to prepare.
The holes weren't obvious to Burnside. He explained: "Oh, I know where Lee's forces are, and I expect to surprise him. I expect to cross and occupy the hills before Lee can bring anything serious to meet me." McClellan had habitually believed Lee and his army capable of the virtually miraculous. Burnside had scaled down such grand estimates, believing that Lee had 80,000 men on the other side of the river, which was not far from the truth, and then went to the other extreme, believing the rebels could be taken unaware by an attack that set up in plain sight, with nothing resembling speed. The attack was scheduled for the morning of 11 December.
* Robert E. Lee was not expecting Burnside to attack through Fredericksburg, but he hoped for it. The Confederate position was so strong that not only would the rebels easily drive off a Federal attack, but they could deliver a massive counterstroke that would pen the Yankees against the Rappahannock and wipe them out.
Longstreet was just as pleased by such a prospect. By nature he was a defensive fighter and counter-puncher. The high ground behind Fredericksburg not only provided protection and clear fields of fire, but the woods dotting the high ground gave concealment as well. Confederate combat engineers were very skilled at exploiting the natural advantages of terrain and had been given plenty of time by the Federals to make the most of their talents. The rebels would have all the advantages, Longstreet said, as long as "the damned Yankees come to us." Stonewall Jackson was less optimistic than Longstreet, saying: "We will whip the enemy, but gain no fruits of victory." They could hurt the Federals bad enough to drive them back, but there was no room for a battle of maneuver that could really do them damage, and even after a one-sided bloodletting the Yankees would still be stronger in material terms than the rebels.
In any case, on 10 December the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac were issued three days rations and 60 rounds of ammunition each, and a huge wagon train with 12 days' rations was assembled. The attack would begin the next day. As a diversion, engineers downriver at Skinker's Neck were ordered to make a fuss as if something big were going to happen there.
It was very cold that evening, but a Union regimental band set up near the ruins of the railroad bridge and began to play favorites such as "Yankee Doodle" and "The Star-Spangled Banner". After a while, the musicians went quiet in hopes of getting a response from a Confederate band, but hearing nothing in reply, the band then played "Dixie". There were hoots and cheers from both sides of the river. Confederate Major General Lafayette McLaws, on the heights above Fredericksburg, found the music more ominous than entertaining. He suspected the Federals might be trying to lull his men into a false sense of security, and put his troops on alert.
* The geography that determined the course of the fight at Fredericksburg was straightforward. The Rappahannock ran west from the north of the town, but turned southeast before reaching it. Below the town a stream named Hazel Run flowed into the Rappahannock. Behind the town was a long, low ridge named Marye's Heights whose ends were bounded by the river on the north and by Hazel Run on the south. Beyond Hazel Run was several miles of small, wooded hills sitting away from the river, with the lower end of the hills marked by a road junction named Hamilton's Crossing. A road, the Old Richmond Road, ran through the middle of the flatlands between the river and these hills, with a railroad line running in parallel closer to the hills.
The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was more or less organized in three sections, with one heavily dug in on Marye's Heights, and the other two ready to fight from the hills to the south of Hazel Run. On the far side of the river ran another long ridge known as Stafford's Heights; Burnside had placed artillery along this ridge to support his attack.
Burnside's instructions to his generals for that attack were broad and vague. Sumner's grand division was to cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg to lead an attack on the northern section of the Confederate line on Marye's Heights, while Hooker's grand division remained in reserve. Franklin's grand division was to cross about a mile downriver, to attack the southern section of the rebel line.
Franklin's engineers required more specifics and Burnside's chief engineer, Lieutenant Cyrus B. Comstock, detailed their tasks in a neat, eight-paragraph order. Five pontoon bridges were to be laid down rapidly to permit the crossing of 100,000 men. If Major Spaulding's 50th New York Engineers had found relocating their pontoon bridges from the upper Potomac a thankless task, they were now faced with a worse one: they had to lay down three pontoon bridges, each about 400 feet (122 meters) long, over the Rappahannock into Fredericksburg in clear sight of the enemy and with no possibility of protection. The other two bridges were to be set up downstream to support Franklin's crossing. That job would be done by the 15th New York Engineers and a battalion of regular engineers. The bridge-builders went into motion at 02:00 AM on 11 December 1862, putting their pontoons in the icy water, positioning and anchoring them, lashing them together, and laying down planks. They worked as swiftly and as quietly as they could, but it wasn't a task that lent itself to secrecy and the Confederates were immediately aware of the activity.
There were 1,600 Confederates in Fredericksburg that night, mostly Mississippi men with a battalion of Florida soldiers thrown in, all under the command of Brigadier General William Barksdale. They were too few to do more than slow down the Federals if it came to a fight, but that was all they had to do: buy time for Lee to shift his divisions around. If Burnside wanted to send his men across at Fredericksburg, Lee was perfectly happy to let him do so, but there was no reason to make it too easy.
There wasn't much the rebels could do while it was still dark. After the sun came up an early-morning mist covered the river, protecting the bridge-builders from pot-shots by their enemy on the southern shore. The mist wouldn't last long. Barksdale promised his superiors that he would open fire as soon as he could see something to shoot at.
It had not been light long before a cannon was fired twice on the heights behind Fredericksburg to alert the Army of Northern Virginia that the Federals were on the move, and then Barksdale's soldiers opened up on the defenseless bridge-builders, killing three of them, wounding others, and driving the rest back to the safety of the far shore. Federal infantry blasted volleys back across the river, but the Confederates had chosen good hiding places and the return fire had no effect. The Federals then brought 36 artillery pieces to the riverbank and spent an hour bombarding the rebels in hopes of driving them out, but no sooner had the guns stopped firing and the engineers returned to their work than they came under fire, to be driven out as before.
The morning passed and the bridges grew no longer. Finally, about 1:00 PM, the Federals became frustrated enough to move up all their artillery, over 100 pieces in all, to begin to systematically blast Fredericksburg into rubble. The town had historical significance to both sides. James Monroe had run his law office there, John Paul Jones and George Washington had lived there as boys. Whatever. The rebels would be driven out, no matter what it took. The Union men fired about 5,000 shells and solid shot into Fredericksburg, smashing holes through walls and setting buildings on fire, but when the engineers went out onto the river to complete the bridge, the rebels stuck their heads out of their hiding places and started to fire on the bridge-builders once again.
At about 2:30 PM, Burnside's chief of artillery, Brigadier General Henry Hunt, suggested to Burnside that troops be sent across to clean out the Confederates. Volunteers were loaded up into pontoon boats and were taken across the water by engineers. The Confederates kept up a heavy fire, killing one man and wounding others, but the boats made it across. The soldiers formed up in the protection of the high riverbank, then dashed up the nearest street to quickly clear a bridgehead and capture 30 rebels. Other Federal infantry came across to help secure the town. At 4:30 PM, Longstreet ordered Barksdale's men to pull out. They did so grudgingly, making the Yankees pay for every house, and finally retreated to a stone wall underneath Marye's Heights.
The engineers completed the bridge and the soldiers poured across, but Burnside did not attack that evening. Darkness fell, with burning buildings and flashes of rebel artillery lighting up the night. Some die-hard Confederates skirmished with Burnside's men, playing deadly games of tag in the smoke and ruins.
The fire and fighting died out the next morning, 12 December. Burnside brought over more troops, but did not attack all that day. His soldiers, having spent the last few weeks in misery and boredom, began to break into houses to steal and vandalize. They danced on pianos and kicked them to pieces, chopped up fine furniture for firewood, smashed china and mirrors, and walked off with the most ridiculous items, such as children's toys, or women's clothes and wigs, which they put on and pranced around with. After their generals had pumped thousands of rounds of shot and shell into the houses, the soldiers could not feel much greater consideration themselves. Some of the officers tried to restrain them but it did no good. Major General Darius Couch set guards on pontoon bridges to take the stolen goods away from the looters, but there wasn't much more he could do about it than that, and most of the confiscated goods would disappear later when the fighting started in earnest.
During this entire fiasco, Confederate artillery remained surprisingly quiet. Soldiers speculated that the rebels were intimidated by Union siege guns, or that they hoped to let the Federals pursue their looting and vandalism undisturbed so it could be exploited for propaganda purposes. One Union soldier had a simpler and much more accurate explanation: "Shit, they want us to get in. Getting out won't be so smart and easy. You'll see."
* While the trashing of Fredericksburg was in progress, the move across the Rappahannock downstream was being fumbled as well, though for different reasons. The engineers had started to lay down their two bridges in the dark hours of the morning on 11 December, roughly at the same time as their colleagues upstream, and like them came under fire when the sun came up.
The Confederates didn't have much in the way of cover, however, and the excellent Yankee artillery quickly made things hot for them. The rebels fell back; rallied in greater numbers, came forward once more, were thrown back again; came back even stronger, and were forced back a third time. They didn't try it again. The first pontoon bridge was complete at about 09:00 AM, the second about two hours later, and then simply sat there astride the river, for all practical purposes unused.
Part of the problem was the commander of the Union forces there, Major General William B. Franklin. He had demonstrated little aggressiveness during the Antietam campaign, and Lincoln regarded him as having "the slows" like his former commander, General McClellan; in hindsight, McClellan was a fireball compared to Franklin. The confused orders Franklin had received from General Burnside did nothing to make him any more aggressive. Burnside's original orders simply indicated that Franklin take his grand division across the river and then to operate "governed by circumstances as to the extent of your movements."
Essentially, Franklin was told to improvise. This would have made much more resolute men uneasy, so when the pontoon bridges were completed he merely informed Burnside of the fact. Burnside, astoundingly, replied to order Franklin not to cross and to wait for further instructions. It wasn't until about 4:00 PM that Franklin got the order to cross, and then he sent across a brigade, which started to tramp across with a regimental band sounding out a stirring march until an agitated officer stopped the music and had the men break step before resonance of their synchronized tread tore the bridges apart.
Two regiments followed and then Burnside got nervous again, ordering the two regiments to return and wait for he body of the Grand Division to cross the next morning, 12 December. They did so, leaving two corps, Major General William F. "Baldy" Smith's VI Corps and Major General John F. Reynolds' I Corps, with (as Smith later wrote) "an impassable stream on their right [Hazel Run], a formidable range of hills occupied by the enemy covering almost their entire front, and at their back a river with two frail bridges connecting its shores." Anyone who remembered Ball's Bluff would have been extremely uneasy with such an arrangement.
At 5:00 PM on the 12th, Burnside rode from his headquarters to inspect Franklin's forces, and then called Franklin and his officers together for a council of war. The generals pressed Burnside for permission to attack immediately but he left without granting it, though he gave the impression that the orders would be sent immediately. The evening wore on into dark night and no orders came. Some of the generals finally gave up waiting and got some sleep.
* While the two Federal grand divisions were moving across the river in fits and starts, Robert E. Lee had not been idle. On 11 December he had ordered two of Stonewall Jackson's four divisions, under A.P. Hill and Taliaferro, from their positions around Fredericksburg to reinforce Jackson's line south of the city. Lee left Jackson's other two divisions, under Jubal Early and D.H. Hill, in place for the moment to guard against a surprise Federal flanking attack.
About midday on 12 December, Lee and Stonewall Jackson performed a personal reconnaissance of the Federal movements across the river south of the city. Lee's observations convinced him that, however foolish it might be, Burnside did in fact intend to attack him through Fredericksburg, right into the teeth of one of the toughest positions the Army of Northern Virginia ever held. Longstreet, always methodical and concerned with the details, was concerned enough over the masses of Yankees assembling in the town below, but when he suggested to his artillery commander that a gun was needed at a critical point, the officer replied: "General, we cover that ground now so well that we comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it."
* When daylight came on the morning of Saturday, 13 December 1862, troops of General "Blinkey" French's division began to form up in the streets of Fredericksburg, only to be hit by a bombardment from Confederate artillery on the heights to the south, with the rebel gunners lobbing shells into the foggy town below to harass the Yankees. Men and horses were wounded and killed, but the soldiers held their ranks.
French's division had been assigned to spearhead the assault on Marye's Heights. His commander, General Bull Sumner, would have been perfectly happy to have led the attack himself, but Burnside did not approve of his officers taking foolhardy risks, and had ordered Sumner to stay on the north side of the Rappahannock. The fog lifted about 10:00 AM, the order to advance was issued an hour later, and at noon the men marched out, fearful of what they faced but glad to be away from the one-sided shelling by rebel gunners.
The Confederate line on Marye's Heights awaiting them was centered on a sunken road, protected by a stone wall about four feet (1.2 meters) high, and manned by the Georgia Brigade of Brigadier General Thomas Cobb, Howell Cobb's younger brother and a respected legal scholar. The Georgia Brigade was part of McLaws' division, and McLaws had also placed a regiment of North Carolina troops in trenches to the north of the sunken road. There were about 2,000 men in the line, with 7,000 behind them in reserve. Well-sited artillery overlooked their position from higher ground to the rear. The Georgians had dug a ditch behind the wall in the sunken road and heaped the earth over the top for added protection and concealment.
The troops were positioned in two ranks. The first rank would fire, then trade places with the second to reload while the second fired, and continue in this cycle to ensure they could lay down heavy fire as continuously and rapidly as possible.
The distance from the edge of town to the Sunken Road (it would, like the Sunken Road at Antietam, acquire the name as a title) was about 600 yards (550 meters), almost all of it completely exposed to Confederate fire. A canal ran parallel to the Federal line of advance about 200 yards (180 meters) south of the town, crossed by three narrow bridges that would funnel the advancing Yankees into packed targets. The rebels had also thoughtfully stripped all the planking off one of the bridges, forcing the Union soldiers to step across on the stringers.
A low bluff on the southern side of the canal offered a little protection. There was also a slight incline close to the Sunken Road where a man hugging the ground could get out of the line of fire. There was no other protection available, and since the terrain near Hazel Run in the south presented various obstacles to the movement of troops, no way to get around the Confederate position.
* French's division marched out of the town into sight of the rebels with Brigadier General Nathan Kimball's brigade in the lead. They came under artillery fire as they filed across the canal bridges, with a single shell killing or wounding 18 men of one regiment, and then formed up under the bluff on the other side. There they fixed bayonets and prepared for their final advance. They then marched out in perfect line of battle. A Confederate lieutenant recalled: "How beautifully they came on! Their bright bayonets glistening in the sunlight made the line look like a huge serpent of blue and steel. The very force of their onset leveled the broad fences bounding the small fields and gardens that interspersed the plain. We could see our shells bursting in their ranks, making great gaps. But on they came, as though they would go straight through and over us."
Kimball's men made it to about 125 yards (110 meters) of the Sunken Road and then Cobb's Georgians let loose a volley, followed by another volley, and another. A few Federals managed to advance to about 40 yards (35 meters) of the wall, but with each blast the Union line incrementally disintegrated as men were cut down and others wavered. Within 20 minutes Kimball's men had been shot, dispersed, or forced down to the ground behind the slight incline. Two more brigades followed and were cut to pieces, each losing half their men. One Union soldier wrote later of being "almost blown off our feet, staggering against a mighty wind." French's division had ceased to exist as an effective force.
Winfield Scott Hancock's division, ordered to support French, followed with almost identical results. Colonel Samuel Zook's brigade was blasted back; Brigadier General Thomas Meagher's Irish Brigade was hit hard, and though some of the Georgia men were Irish themselves and didn't want to shoot their brethren, they did it anyway and prayed for forgiveness; finally, the brigade of Brigadier General John Caldwell went forward, to meet the same fate as the others. The Union men left behind scores of dead and wounded in front of the Sunken Road.
One of Caldwell's regimental commanders, 23-year-old Nelson A. Miles, became convinced after his men took a bloodying that the tactics used so far -- a methodical advance in which men would fire and then reload -- had not a chance of succeeding. He believed that they would be better off to simply level their bayonets and charge the wall on a dead run. It was wretchedly suicidal, but less suicidal than the current approach. Miles sent a message to Caldwell suggesting such a charge. Caldwell refused. While waiting for the answer, however, Miles was hit in the throat and the bullet passed out behind his left ear. Such was his determination that he sought out Major General Oliver O. Howard, whose division was behind Hancock's, to propose the bayonet charge to him instead. Then, his message delivered, Miles passed out.
On the right flank of Caldwell's line, the 5th New Hampshire was being led into the fire by Colonel Edward E. Cross, the same fellow who had told them to give the rebels the "war whoop" at Antietam. Cross had gone into the battle after having put his affairs in order, sensing that he would not come back alive, and when a shell exploded in his face his fear would seem to have come true. He fell down, cut up with shell fragments, and lay there stunned until something struck him in the leg. He struggled to his feet, spat out blood, gravel, and teeth while shells burst all around him; and then a fragment struck the scabbard of his sword and threw him to the ground again. He lay there, waiting to die while soldiers trampled over him in attack and retreat.
After about an hour of such fury and pain, Darius Couch, II Corps commander, finally came to the same conclusion as Colonel Miles. Their only chance of success was a fast bayonet charge, with no halts to fire and reload. He went up into the steeple of the Fredericksburg court house to get a better idea of what could be done. The view wasn't encouraging. He later wrote: "Oh! Great God! See how our men, our poor fellows are falling!" The bright lines of Union troops were now wreckage scattered all over the field. New units marched up only to add to the ruin. "As they charged, the artillery fire would break their formation and they would get mixed; then they would close up, go forward, receive the withering infantry fire, and those who were best able would run to the houses and fight as best they could; and then the next brigade coming up in succession would do its duty and melt like snow coming down on warm ground."
Couch concluded that even a bayonet charge was completely impossible. French and Hancock's divisions had been torn to ribbons. Hancock's division lost over 2,000 men, 42% of its strength. More brigades were thrown in, including reinforcements from Howard's division, then Brigadier General Sam Sturgis's division from IX Corps. The men were as determined as those who had gone before, with exactly the same results. Four Federal divisions had been sent into the fight, and all four had been driven back. After two hours of fighting, the Yankees paused to regroup and consider what to do next. The battle had been very one-sided, with the Confederates giving out much more punishment than they were taking themselves. When Longstreet had sent a message to Cobb ordering him to pull back if the Union men flanked his line, Cobb remarked to an aide: "Well! If they wait for me to fall back, they will wait a long time."
Lee and Longstreet had also been observing the battle. Lee had been impressed with the persistence of the Federals though not their good sense. Lee watched the Yankees regroup for another advance, had remarked to Longstreet: "General, they are massing very heavily and will break your line, I am afraid." Longstreet replied calmly: "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."
Still, during the fighting the careful Longstreet had sent two regiments under Brigadier General Joseph Kershaw to reinforce Cobb. General Ransom also sent reinforcements to beef up the line. As these new troops were being put into place, General Cobb was hit in the thigh by a bullet; it severed an artery and he bled to death in minutes. Kershaw became the commander on the firing line. He now had four ranks of riflemen to defend the Sunken Road, and Kershaw later described their fire as "the most rapid and continuous that I have ever witnessed."
* Burnside's first attack had failed. Burnside had many good qualities, but one of his grave defects was that when things went wrong, he often became obstinate. He decided to simply try it all over again. He directed Joe Hooker to get his grand division across the Rappahannock and march them up to the Confederate line. Hooker was never one to just blindly obey orders, however, and so while his men were crossing the pontoon bridges into Fredericksburg in preparation for their attack, he rode up to the firing line to see for himself what was going on. He didn't like what he saw. It convinced him, as he said later, "that it would be a useless waste of life to attack with the force at my disposal." He rode back to Burnside's headquarters to argue against the attack.
While he was gone, Brigadier General Dan Butterfield, Hooker's V Corps commander, ordered Brigadier General Charles Griffin to take his 1st Division across the battlefield to help General Sturgis's troops. Griffin sent his three brigades in, one by one, with more of the same bloody and pointless results. General Couch wanted to help Sturgis's men as well, and ordered his chief of artillery, Captain Charles Morgan, to send a battery onto the field. Morgan replied: "General, a battery can't live there!" Couch, an icy and resolute soldier, replied: "Then it must die there."
And so it happened. Captain John G. Hazard took the six guns of Battery B of the 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery across the Rappahannock, set them up 150 yards (135 meters) from the Sunken Wall, with his men and horses being shot even as they unlimbered their artillery, and by the hardest managed to bring the rebels under fire. It did little good.
Meanwhile, yet another Union division, the 3rd Division of V Corps, under Brigadier General Andrew Humphreys, was sent into the fire. Couch told Humphreys: "Now is the time for you to go in." -- and then Humphreys, with a look of "grim determination", as Couch put 25 years later, turned to his staff, which included his son Lieutenant Henry H. Humphreys, and said: "Gentlemen, I shall lead the charge. I presume, of course, you will wish to ride with me."
Humphreys took his 2nd Brigade up to the wall and was thrown back like all the others. By the time he returned to his 1st Brigade, he had come to the same conclusion that Colonel Miles and General Couch had before him. He ordered his men to fix bayonets and simply charge over the masses of dead and wounded in front of them. He galloped his big black horse in front of his men and shouted: "Officers to the front of the charge. Never mind the obstacles in the way! CHARGE!"
They moved as fast as they could into the rain of bullets and shells. As they passed over the wounded, the men lying on the ground shouted cried out to them: "Stop! Lie down! You'll all be killed!" Some even tried to reach out and grab their comrades as they marched by. The rebels held their fire until the 1st Brigade was 50 yards (45 meters) in front of them, and then all four lines of riflemen stood up and blasted them with a terrific volley, followed by more of the same. One Confederate said later: "Ye Gods! It is no longer a battle, it is butchery!"
The Federals were once more broken up and confused, and a division of regulars under Brigadier General George Sykes was sent in to help cover the retreat. The most that could be said was that they drew fire away from their colleagues as they were cut up in their turn.
Hooker belatedly got back to the battleground at about this time. His arguments with Burnside had gone nowhere, Burnside had pig-headedly insisted that Hooker continue the attacks, and Hooker, likely remembering what had happened to Fitz-John Porter for his refusal to march through the Confederates back at Second Manassas, ordered a division under Brigadier General George W. Getty from IX Corps to make a final attack towards the Confederate right before the sun finally went down. One brigade from Getty's division under Colonel Rush Hawkins moved forward in the twilight. The rebels held their fire since they could not see the Federals clearly, but when Hawkins' men got close enough to be easily seen, they were torn to pieces like all the others.
Hooker had done his duty and ordered the attacks to stop. It was now too dark for more fighting anyway. Later he said that he had "lost as many men as his orders required." Seven Union divisions had been thrown against the rebels on Marye's Heights. They lost about 7,000 men, while the Confederates lost only about 1,200. Longstreet later said: "The charges had been desperate and bloody, but hopeless." During the peak of the fighting, Lee had observed the Federals continuing their futile charges over the bodies of their dead, and said: "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."
* Downstream from Fredericksburg, the day's battle took an oddly reversed course. The generals of Franklin's grand division had been ready to move out and attack all night long and had been waiting for word from Burnside. In fact, Burnside did not issue orders until almost 6:00 AM that morning, and then he had them delivered by hand, even though there was a telegraph line to Franklin's headquarters. The orders didn't arrive until 7:45 AM and Franklin found them, just as before, extremely vague, specifying only that he commit "a division at least" to a limited assault. Franklin sent out orders for his men to attack, but the fuzzy orders did nothing to get rid of the uncertainty that had been hobbling him for the last two days.
Franklin's divisions were faced by all four of Stonewall Jackson's divisions, arrayed in the hills above the railroad line. In the front line was A.P. Hill's division, backed up by William B. Taliaferro's division, as well as the divisions of Jubal Early and D.H. Hill, which had marched in during the night. Jackson had 30,000 men and plenty of guns packed into a front about 3,000 yards wide; Jeb Stuart's cavalry stood off on the flank to the south of the rebel position, ready to harass any Union advance. There was a significant flaw in the deployment of Hill's men, however. Roughly in the middle of the line there was a triangular tangle of trees, underbrush, and swamp about 600 yards (550 meters) wide that Hill had determined was impassable. He left it undefended, though he had positioned a South Carolina brigade under Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg on a ridge behind it.
Gregg, a scholarly lawyer by training who was a surprisingly courageous combat leader, was informed of the gap in Hill's defenses, but he either did not understand or, being slightly deaf, did not hear. Believing there were friendlies in front of him, he ordered his men to stack arms so they would not be inclined to shoot other Confederates by mistake.
Jackson, in the company of Lee and Longstreet, rode among his men that morning. Jackson was wearing, much to everyone's shock, a splendid new uniform and cap decked out with gold braid, along with shiny new boots. His worn uniform and dingy cap were gone. The men hooped and hollered at him, saying Old Jack wouldn't want to fight lest he get his fancy clothes dirty. Throwing jokes at Jackson was fun because, like all good zealots, he had absolutely no concept of humor or irony. Longstreet like to pull Jackson's leg, too. When Longstreet suggested the ranks of Federals might frighten him, Jackson replied: "We shall see very soon whether I shall not frighten them."
"Jackson, what are you going to do with all those people over there?" Longstreet asked, continuing the game.
"Sir, we will give them the bayonet," Jackson replied, which was likely the sort of beady-eyed answer Longstreet had expected.
* At about 08:30 AM that morning, the Federals, hidden by the morning fog, began to move up for their assault. In the lead was Major General George Meade's Pennsylvania Reserve division; to the left was Brigadier General John Gibbon's division, while to the right was Major General Abner Doubleday's division. The three divisions moved south along the riverbank, and then turned to advance on the Confederates.
The rebels were perfectly aware that something was going on. At about 10:00 AM, the fog lifted to reveal all of Franklin's grand division before them, about a thousand yards (900 meters) away. The Confederates found the Union formations a "magnificent pageant" that evoked "unbounded admiration". Even Longstreet, who was still there, called it a "splendid array" in contrast to the ragged and dingy Confederate troops. Union officers ran out in front of the massed formations of men and read of their orders. Then the Federals began a seemingly irresistible movement while Union batteries on both sides of the river swept the ground in front of their advance.
The rebels might have admired the Yankees, but they were by no means intimidated by them. The boyish Major John Pelham, Jeb Stuart's artillery commander in charge of a battery of 18 guns south and forward of Jackson's line, sensed an opportunity and asked Stuart if he could take two guns down and open up a flanking fire on the massed Union men. Stuart agreed.
Pelham and a group of his men galloped off with the two guns, set up swiftly, and started firing into the Federal ranks, bringing the Union advance to a halt. Federal guns started firing back and quickly disabled one of Pelham's pieces, but Pelham kept moving the other gun around, firing it, moving it again, and firing it to keep the Yankees confounded. Despite suggestions by General Stuart that Pelham was pushing his luck, Pelham replied: "Tell the General I can hold my ground." -- and did not withdraw until he was almost out of ammunition, having delayed the Federal advance for a half hour.
With Pelham gone, Meade could then continue his advance. Doubleday's division remained in place to guard against more harassment by Stuart's cavalry. Meade's soldiers moved forward until they got within about 800 yards (725 meters) of Jackson's line, and then all the rebel artillery opened up on them, tearing holes in their ranks and forcing them to halt once more. Union artillery replied in force and a terrific artillery duel followed. A Captain James A. Hall of the 2nd Maine Battery was directing fire from his horse when a Confederate shell zipped past him to land on a cassion, blowing it up with a huge explosion. Hall dismounted, walked over to a gun, sighted it, ordered that it be fired, watched as the shell sailed over to the Confederate batteries to blow up one of their cassions, and then walked back and got back on his horse.
Meade's men managed to advance slowly until about 1:00 PM, when the Federal gunners had to stop firing out of fear of hitting their own men, but one of the final shells they fired blew up a rebel cassion with devastating results. The Union men cheered, Meade ordered a charge, and his soldiers threw themselves into the tangled gap in the Confederate line. Meade's 1st Brigade went in and turned northward, hitting a Confederate brigade under Brigadier General James H. Lane in the flank. Meade's 2nd Brigade went in and turned southward, catching the brigade of Brigadier General James J. Archer in the flank as well. The rebels were thrown back in disarray and the gap widened, with Meade's men pouring in as fast as they could.
The Federals made contact with Maxcy Gregg's 1st South Carolina regiment behind the tangle and threw them into confusion. Gregg still hadn't realized there were no Confederates in front of him; his men weren't prepared, and Gregg himself was sufficiently confused to even ride among his men and shout at them not to fire because he thought Meade's men were friends. It was a fatal mistake. He was shot off his horse, taking a bullet in his spine, and died not long afterward.
By this time the Confederates were reacting to the crisis, and with two divisions in reserve they had plenty of resources for response. Elements of Early's and Taliaferro's divisions counterattacked, blunting the Union drive, and then the survivors of Hall's and Lane's brigades rallied. The gap in the line now became a trap for the Federals, who were fired on from three sides. Meade's 3rd Brigade came in to bolster the advance, but they came under fire from a rebel battery. The 3rd Brigade's commander, Brigadier General Conrad F. Jackson, was shot and killed, and his men fell back. John Gibbon's division, fighting to the north of Meade's in the face of Confederate General Lane's men, was completely exposed to fire and could not make much progress in support. Gibbon sent in his 3rd Brigade, then the 2nd, but they never made to the rebel lines.
Then Gibbon ordered Colonel Adrian Root and his 1st Brigade forward. They pressed on through a storm of fire that kept their advance to a crawl but they finally managed to make it to rebel lines, where they shouted and rushed their tormenters, overpowering the Confederates in the front lines. Root rode back to ask Gibbon for reinforcements, but none were forthcoming, and the 1st Brigade's advance came to a halt.
By this time, Confederate counterattacks were beginning to tell on Meade's and Gibbon's men, and the Yankees began to crumble back in the direction from which they had come. Meade's division had lost a third of its 4,500 men. Franklin had 20,000 men in reserve but refused to commit them. Left without support, the bold Federal attack turned into a retreat. The rebels pursued. Two of their brigades became so enthusiastic that they disobeyed orders and continued their chase beyond the railroad line. Franklin's reserves, consisting of two divisions under Brigadier General David Birney and Major General Dan Sickles, responded, and though the Confederates inflicted hundreds of casualties on the Union men, concentrated canister fire finally shattered the rebels' counterattack and threw them back to their own lines.
The battle downstream was effectively over after two hours of intense fighting and heavy casualties. Franklin had lost almost 5,000 men while Jackson had lost almost 3,500. In mid-afternoon, Burnside sent Franklin an order to resume the attack, but what little fight Franklin had in him was gone, and he was satisfied to re-form his injured army. His generals, discouraged and angered by Franklin's failure to follow up initial success, did little to change his mind. While their fellows upstream died in rows for the rest of the day, Franklin and his men stood idle.
Jackson, in contrast, wanted to sweep the Federals into the Rappahannock, but when he moved his artillery forward to support an attack later that afternoon, the gunners were swamped with fire from Union batteries. Jackson had to pull them back.
The day's battle was ironic. In the fight beneath Marye's Heights, the Federals had fought with absolute determination and no hope of success. Near Deep Run, they had fought with much less determination and much more hope of winning. Once more, the Army of the Potomac could have won if things had been slightly different, but the opportunity was, once more, squandered.
