Battle of Fredericksburg

Background

In November 1862 Lincoln needed a success in the East. McClellan had stopped Lee at Antietam in September but had not pursued him, and on 5 November Lincoln ordered his removal. On 7 November command of the Army of the Potomac passed to Major General Ambrose Burnside, who had led IX Corps and made his name in coastal North Carolina. He felt unequal to the post and accepted partly to keep it from Joseph Hooker.

Burnside's plan, sent to Halleck on 9 November, relied on speed. He would feint towards Culpeper or Gordonsville, then shift south-east to Falmouth, cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg and drive on Richmond along the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad before Lee could block him. Lincoln approved it on 14 November, with a warning to move fast. The army marched on 15 November and its leading elements reached Falmouth on the 17th, when the town was held by perhaps 500 Confederates.

But the pontoons had gone astray in Washington's paperwork. Requested on 7 November, most of the bridging was still on the upper Potomac, and the engineers lacked the 270 horses needed to move it. Sumner urged an immediate crossing; Burnside, fearing that autumn rain would strand him on the far bank, refused. Boats for one bridge reached Falmouth on 25 November and the rest at the end of the month.

The delay of about two weeks gave Lee his position. Longstreet's corps was on Marye's Heights by 23 November; Jackson force-marched from the Shenandoah Valley, reached Lee on 29 November and spread his divisions downstream to watch Skinker's Neck and Port Royal. After gunboats drew fire at Skinker's Neck, Burnside decided to cross directly at the town, reasoning on 9 December that Lee would least expect it there.

The armies

Burnside had about 120,000 men, some 114,000 of them engaged, in three grand divisions of two corps each: Sumner's Right (Couch's II and Willcox's IX Corps), Hooker's Centre (Stoneman's III and Butterfield's V) and Franklin's Left (Reynolds's I and W. F. Smith's VI), each with attached cavalry. Sigel's XI Corps and Slocum's XII stayed in reserve and did not fight. The army's great asset was its artillery: some 220 guns on Stafford Heights, on the north bank, made any Confederate counter-attack across the plain hazardous. The grand divisions, though, added a layer of command between Burnside and his corps.

Lee had nearly 79,000 men, about 72,500 engaged, in two corps newly authorised by the Confederate Congress. Longstreet's First Corps (McLaws, R. H. Anderson, Pickett, Hood and Ransom) held the heights behind the town; Jackson's Second Corps (A. P. Hill, D. H. Hill, Early and Taliaferro), some 35,000–37,000 men, held the right around Prospect Hill. Pendleton led the reserve artillery and Stuart the cavalry. The two armies together were the largest that ever met in battle in the war.

The ground favoured Lee unevenly. Marye's Heights rose only 40–50 feet, but it overlooked an open slope reached across a canal ditch with three narrow bridges, and at its foot the Telegraph Road ran in a cut behind a four-foot stone wall. Prospect Hill stood barely 65 feet above the plain; Jackson made up for it by stacking his divisions nearly a mile deep.

The battle

CDB90 treats the battle as one engagement, number 194 (FREDERICKSBURG), from 11:00 to 16:00 on 13 December only; the crossing and the withdrawal fall outside it. Times are approximate.

11 December: the crossing under fire. Before dawn, in fog, engineers began six pontoon bridges: two opposite the town centre, one at its southern end and three downstream near Deep Run. Barksdale's Mississippians, firing from cellars and riverside houses, repeatedly drove the engineers off the town bridges. About 150 guns on Stafford Heights shelled Fredericksburg for some four hours, with little effect on riflemen under cover. At Hunt's urging, Colonel Norman Hall's brigade volunteered to cross in the boats; at about 15:00 men of the 7th Michigan and 19th Massachusetts rowed over, followed by the 20th Massachusetts, seized the bank and fought street by street, the first major urban combat of the war. Downstream, Franklin's bridges were finished by 11:00 against light opposition.

12 December. Sumner's and Franklin's men crossed through the day, and Union troops looted the town on a scale not yet seen in the war. Burnside's orders did not reach Franklin until 07:15–07:45 on the 13th. Instead of attacking with his whole grand division of almost 60,000 men, Franklin was to send "a division at least" to seize the high ground near Hamilton's Crossing, while Sumner sent a division towards Marye's Heights.

13 December, morning: Prospect Hill. Reynolds chose Meade's division of Pennsylvania Reserves, about 4,500 men, with Gibbon's in support. Meade stepped off at 08:30 in fog. Pelham, with two guns (soon one) on the Richmond Road at right angles to the advance, held it up for about an hour; then Walker's batteries on Prospect Hill opened and an artillery duel stalled Meade for almost two hours. At about 13:00 he went forward again and, by chance, into a 600-yard gap of swampy woods between Lane's and Archer's brigades of A. P. Hill's division. His brigades turned on both flanks, reached the crest and fell on Gregg's South Carolinians, many with arms stacked; Gregg was mortally wounded. Gibbon, attacking at about 13:30 with no gap to exploit, stalled at the railway. Neither Franklin nor Reynolds fed in reserves. Early's and Taliaferro's divisions counter-attacked and drove the Federals out of the woods and across the fields to the Richmond Road, where Union canister and Birney's belated brigades stopped them. Franklin, with VI Corps and Doubleday largely idle, ignored Burnside's order to renew the attack. The southern fight cost about 5,000 Union and 4,000 Confederate casualties.

13 December, from noon: Marye's Heights. Burnside meant this as the secondary attack, but by late morning he ordered Sumner forward. From about noon French's division, then Hancock's and Howard's of II Corps and Sturgis's of IX Corps, filed over the canal bridges, formed under a low bluff and climbed the open slope into rifle fire from the Sunken Road and artillery on the crest. Cobb's Georgians, reinforced by Kershaw and North Carolina troops until they stood four ranks deep, broke every attack; Cobb was mortally wounded. The Irish Brigade lost 545 of 1,200 men, and the first hour cost the Union nearly 3,000. From about 15:30 Hooker's Centre Grand Division went in, against Hooker's own advice: Griffin's three brigades, then Humphreys's two brigades of nine-month men, part of which came within 25–50 yards. Getty's division attacked Willis Hill in the twilight, and Hawkins's brigade made the last charge after sunset. Seven divisions made fourteen or fifteen charges, by different counts; none reached the wall. The Union lost 6,000–8,000 men before the heights, the Confederates about 1,000–1,200.

14–15 December. Burnside proposed to lead IX Corps in a fresh assault but was talked out of it. On the 14th he asked for a truce to tend the wounded, which Lee granted, and on the night of 15–16 December the army recrossed the river and took up its bridges.

Aftermath

The Union army lost about 12,350–12,650 men: 12,653 in the Official Records, of whom 1,284 were killed. The Confederates lost about 5,300–5,400, most on Jackson's front, though some writers put the revised total nearer 4,200. On the southern flank losses were roughly even; at the stone wall about eight Federals fell for every Confederate. More than half of Lee's army never fought.

The South celebrated, but Lee later wrote that he had been "much depressed": he had not gained a foot of ground, and knew the North could replace its losses. In the North, Governor Andrew Curtin told Lincoln it had been "a butchery", and Lincoln wrote, "If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it." Burnside took the blame on himself. After the failed "Mud March" in January, Lincoln replaced him with Hooker on 25 January 1863, by when absence and desertion had reached nearly 27 per cent of the army. Five months later the same ground was fought over again at Chancellorsville.

Memory has fixed on the stone wall. Frank O'Reilly argues that this distorts the battle: Burnside's main effort, and his one real chance, was at Prospect Hill and the Slaughter Pen Farm, and once Meade's breakthrough was left unsupported the battle could not be won. Blame is usually shared between Burnside's vague orders and persistence at Marye's Heights, and Franklin's literal and cautious reading of those orders.

Wargaming it

Fredericksburg is two battles on one long table, linked by Burnside's orders. A whole-battle game works at brigade level, with 30-minute turns over the daylight of 13 December. Prospect Hill and Marye's Heights each make a strong regimental game, and the crossing of 11 December a fine small one: engineers and assault boats against Barksdale's riflemen in the houses, with the Stafford Heights batteries as heavy but inaccurate off-table fire.

Prospect Hill is the better contest. The 600-yard gap between Lane and Archer should be hidden until the Union player finds it; fog until mid-morning limits sighting; Pelham's flanking guns and Walker's batteries should cost Meade time. The Union decision is whether Franklin feeds in VI Corps and Doubleday to exploit a breakthrough. The Confederate decisions are when to commit Early and Taliaferro, and how far to pursue under the Union guns.

Marye's Heights is lopsided by nature, and a scenario should score the Union for pinning Longstreet and drawing off his reserves, not for taking the wall. Command rules should force Union attacks in a brigade at a time, and make it hard to cancel orders once given.

The what-ifs are the attraction: the pontoons arriving by 17 November, or Sumner crossing before Lee concentrated; Franklin attacking at dawn with his whole grand division; Gibbon and Birney moving with Meade; or Burnside renewing the assault on 14 December.

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