From this, the Lacy House, which Sumner had made his headquarters, he
directed the advance of his right grand division of the Army of the
Potomac on December 11, 1862. Little did he dream that his men of the
Second Corps were to bear the brunt of the fighting and the most crushing
blow of the defeat on the 13th. Soon after three o'clock on the morning of
the 11th the columns moved out with alacrity to the river bank and before
daybreak, hidden at first by the fog, the pontoniers began building the
bridges. Confederate sharpshooters drove off the working party from the
bridge below the Lacy House and also from the middle bridge farther down.
As the mist cleared, volunteers ferried themselves over in the boats and
drove off the riflemen. At last, at daybreak of the 12th, the town of
Fredericksburg was occupied, but the whole of another foggy day was
consumed in getting the army concentrated on the western shore. Nineteen
batteries (one hundred and four guns) accompanied Sumner's troops, but all
save seven of these were ordered back or left in the streets of
Fredericksburg. Late on the morning of the 13th the confused and belated
orders began to arrive from Burnside's headquarters across the river; one
was for Sumner to assault the Confederate batteries on Marye's Heights. At
nightfall Sumner's men retired into Fredericksburg, leaving 4,800 dead or
wounded on the field. "Oh, those men, those men over there! I cannot get
them out of my mind!" wailed Burnside in an agony of failure. Yet he was
planning almost in the same breath to lead in person his old command, the
Ninth Corps, in another futile charge in the morning. On the night of the
14th, better judgment prevailed and the order came to retire across the
Rappahannock.
[Illustration: NEW LEADERS AND NEW PLANS