THE FIELD OF FREDERICKSBURG.
Fredericksburg stands upon a ridge on the right bank of the river.
Behind the town is a plain, with a still more elevated ridge beyond.
From the summit of the last you obtain an excellent view of the
battle-field; the plain below the town where Hooker fought; the heights
on the opposite side of the river manned by our batteries; the fields on
the left; and the plain between the ridge and the town, where the
frightfullest slaughter was.
Along by the foot of the crest, just where it slopes off to the plain,
runs a road with a wall of heavy quarried stones on each side. In this
road the Rebels lay concealed when the first attempt was made to storm
the Heights. The wall on the lower side, towards the town, is the “stone
wall” of history. It was a perfect breastwork, of great strength, and in
the very best position that could have been chosen. The earth from the
fields is more or less banked up against it; and this, together with the
weeds and bushes which grew there, served to conceal it from our men.
The sudden cruel volley of flame and lead which poured over it into
their very faces, scarce a dozen paces distant, as they charged, was the
first intimation they received of any enemy below the crest. No troops
could stand that near and deadly fire. They broke, and leaving the
ground strown with the fallen, retreated to the “ravine,”—a deep ditch
with a little stream flowing through it, in the midst of the plain.
“Just when they turned to run, that was the worst time for them!” said a
young Rebel I met on the Heights. “Then our men had nothing to fear; but
they just rose right up and let ’em have it! Every charge your troops
made afterwards, it was the same. The infantry in the road, and the
artillery on these Heights, just mowed them down in swaths! You never
saw anything look as that plain did after the battle. Saturday morning,
before the fight, it was brown; Sunday it was all blue; Monday it was
white, and Tuesday it was red.”
I asked him to explain this seeming riddle.
“Don’t you see? Before the fight there was just the field. Next it was
covered all over with your fellows in blue clothes. Saturday night the
blue clothes were stripped off, and only their white under-clothes left.
Monday night these were stripped off, and Tuesday they lay all in their
naked skins.”
“Who stripped the dead in that way?”
“It was mostly done by the North Carolinians. They are the triflin’est
set of men!”
“What do you mean by _triflin’est_?”
“They ha’n’t got no sense. They’ll stoop to anything. They’re more like
savages than civilized men. They say ‘_we ’uns_’ and ‘_you ’uns_,’ and
all such outlandish phrases. They’ve got a great long tone to their
voice, like something wild.”
“Were you in the battle?”
“Yes, I was in all of Saturday’s fight. My regiment was stationed on the
hill down on the right there. We could see everything. Your men piled up
their dead for breastworks. It was an awful sight when the shells struck
them, and exploded! The air, for a minute, would be just full of legs
and arms and pieces of trunks. Down by the road there we dug out a
wagon-load of muskets. They had been piled up by your fellows, and dirt
thrown over them, for a breastwork. But the worst sight I saw was three
days afterwards. I didn’t mind the heaps of dead, nor nothing. But just
a starving dog sitting by a corpse, which he wouldn’t let anybody come
near, and which he never left night nor day;—by George, that just made
me cry! We finally had to shoot the dog to get at the man to bury him.”
The young Rebel thought our army might have been easily destroyed after
Saturday’s battle,—at least that portion of it which occupied
Fredericksburg. “We had guns on that point that could have cut your
pontoon bridge in two; and then our artillery could have blown Burnside
all to pieces, or have compelled his surrender.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“Because General Lee was too humane. He didn’t want to kill so many
men.”
A foolish reason, but it was the best the young man could offer. The
truth is, however, Burnside’s army was in a position of extreme danger,
after its failure to carry the Heights, and had not Lee been diligently
expecting another attack, instead of a retreat, he might have subjected
it to infinite discomfiture. It was to do us more injury, and not less,
that he delayed to destroy the pontoon bridge and shell the town while
our troops were in it.
The young man gloried in that great victory.
“But,” said I, “what did you gain? It was all the worse for you that you
succeeded then. That victory only prolonged the war, and involved
greater loss. We do not look at those transient triumphs; we look at the
grand result. The Confederacy was finally swept out, and we are
perfectly satisfied.”
“Well, so am I,” he replied, looking me frankly in the face. “I tell
you, if we had succeeded in establishing a separate government, this
would have been the worst country, for a poor man, under the sun.”
“How so?”
“There would have been no chance for white labor. Every rich man would
have owned his nigger mason, his nigger carpenter, his nigger
blacksmith; and the white mechanic, as well as the white farm-laborer,
would have been crushed out.”
“You think, then, the South will be better off without slavery?”
“Certainly, I do. So does every white man that has to work for a living,
if he isn’t a fool.”
“Then why did you fight for it?”
“We wasn’t fighting for slavery; we was fighting for our independence.
That’s the way the most of us understood it; though we soon found out it
was the rich man’s war, and not the pore man’s. We was fighting against
our own interests, that’s shore!”
There is a private cemetery on the crest, surrounded by a brick wall.
Burnside’s artillery had not spared it. I looked over the wall, which
was badly smashed in places, and saw the overthrown monuments and broken
tombstones lying on the ground. The heights all around were covered with
weeds, and scarred by Rebel intrenchments; here and there was an old
apple-tree; and I marked the ruins of two or three small brick houses.
On the brow of the hill, overlooking the town, is the Marye estate, one
of the finest about Fredericksburg before the blast of battle struck it.
The house was large and elegant, occupying a beautiful site, and
surrounded by terraces and shady lawns. Now if you would witness the
results of artillery and infantry firing, visit that house. The pillars
of the porch, built of brick, and covered with a cement of lime and
white sand, were speckled with the marks of bullets. Shells and solid
shot had made sad havoc with the walls and the wood-work inside. The
windows were shivered, the partitions torn to pieces, and the doors
perforated.
I found a gigantic negro at work at a carpenter’s bench in one of the
lower rooms. He seemed glad to receive company, and took me from the
basement to the zinc-covered roof, showing me all the more remarkable
shot-holes.
“De Rebel sharpshooters was in de house; dat’s what made de Yankees
shell it so.”
“Where were the people who lived here?”
“Dey all lef’ but me. I stopped to see de fight. I tell ye, I wouldn’t
stop to see anoder one! I thought I was go’n’ to have fine fun, and tell
all about it. I _heerd_ de fight, but I didn’t _see_ it!”
“Were you frightened?”
“Hoo!” flinging up his hands with a ludicrous expression. “Don’t talk
about skeered! I never was so skeered since I was bo’n! I stood hyer by
dis sher winder; I ’spected to see de whole of it; I know I was green! I
was look’n’ to see de fir’n’ down below dar, when a bullet come by me,
_h’t_! quick as dat. ‘Time fo’ me to be away f’om hyer!’ and I started;
but I’d no sooner turned about, when de bullets begun to strike de house
jes’ like dat!” drumming with his fingers. “I went down-stars, and out
dis sher house, quicker ’n any man o’ my size ever went out a house
befo’e! Come, and I’ll show you whar I was hid.”
It was in the cellar of a little dairy-house, of which nothing was left
but the walls.
“I got in thar wid anoder cullud man. I thought I was as skeered as
anybody could be; but whew! he was twicet as skeered as I was.
B-r-r-r-r! b-r-r-r-r! de fir’n’ kep’ up a reg’lar noise like dat, all
day long. Every time a shell struck anywhar near, I knowed de next would
kill me. ‘Jim,’ says I, ‘now de next shot will be our own!’ Dem’s de
on’y wu’ds I spoke; but he was so skeered he never spoke at all.”
“Were you here at the fight the year after?”
“Dat was when Shedwick [Sedgwick] come. I thought if dar was go’n’ to be
any fight’n’, I’d leave dat time, shore. I hitched up my oxen, think’n’
I’d put out, but waited fo’ de mo’nin’ to see. Dat was Sunday mo’nin’. I
hadn’t slep’ none, so I jest thought I’d put my head on my hand a minute
till it growed light. I hadn’t mo’e ’n drapped asleep; I’d nodded oncet
or twicet: so;” illustrating; “no longer ’n dat; when—c-r-r-r-r,—I
looked up,—all de wu’ld was fir’n’! Shedwick’s men dey run up de road,
got behind de batteries on dis sher hill, captured every one; and I
never knowed how dey done it so quick. Dat was enough fo’ me. If dar’s
go’n’ to be any mo’e fight’n’, I go whar da’ an’t no wa’!”
“A big fellow like you tell about being skeered!” said the young Rebel.
“I knowed de bigger a man was, de bigger de mark fo’ de balls. I weighs
two hundred and fifty-two pounds.”
“Where is your master?” I asked.
“I ha’n’t got no master now; Mr. Marye was my master. He’s over de
mountain. I was sold at auction in Fredericksburg oncet, and he bought
me fo’ twelve hundred dolla’s. Now he pays me wages,—thirty dolla’s a
month. I wo’ked in de mill while de wa’ lasted. Men brought me co’n to
grind. Some brought a gallon; some brought two qua’ts; it was a big load
if anybody brought half a bushel. Dat’s de way folks lived. Now he’s got
anoder man in de mill, and he pays me for tak’n’ keer o’ dis sher place
and fitt’n’ it up a little.”
“Are you a carpenter?”
“Somethin’ of a carpenter; I kin do whatever I turns my hand to.”
The young Rebel afterwards corroborated this statement. Although he did
not like niggers generally, and wished they were all out of the country,
he said Charles (for that was the giant’s name) was an exception; and he
gave him high praise for the fidelity and sagacity he had shown in
saving his master’s property from destruction.
While we were sitting under the portico, a woman came up the hill, and
began to talk and jest in a familiar manner with Charles. I noticed that
my Rebel acquaintance looked exceedingly disgusted.
“That woman,” said he to me, “has got a nigger husband. That’s what
makes her talk that way. White folks won’t associate with her, and she
goes with the darkies. We used to have lynch law for them cases. Such
things wa’n’t allowed. A nigger had better have been dead than be caught
living with a white woman. The house would get torn down over their
heads some night, and nobody would know who did it.”
“Are you sure such things were not allowed? Five out of six of your
colored population have white blood in their veins. How do you account
for it?”
“O, that comes from white fathers!”
“And slave mothers,” said I. “That I suppose was all right; but to a
stranger it doesn’t look very consistent. You would lynch a poor black
man for living in wedlock with a white woman, and receive into the best
society white men who were raising up illegitimate slave children by
their colored mistresses.”
“Yes, that’s just what was done; there’s no use denying it. I’ve seen
children sold at auction in Fredericksburg by their own fathers. But
nobody ever thought it was just right. It always happened when the
masters was in debt, and their property had to be taken.”
The field below the stone wall belonged to this young man’s mother. It
was now a cornfield; a sturdy crop was growing where the dead had lain
in heaps.
“Soon as Richmond fell I came home; and ’Lijah and I went to work and
put in that piece of corn. I didn’t wait for Lee’s surrender. Thousands
did the same. We knew that if Richmond fell, the war would be removed
from Virginia, and we had no notion of going to fight in other States.
The Confederate army melted away just like frost in the sun, so that
only a small part of it remained to be surrendered.”
He invited me to go through the cornfield and see where the dead were
buried. Near the middle of the piece a strip some fifteen yards long and
four wide had been left uncultivated. “There’s a thousand of your men
buried in this hole; that’s the reason we didn’t plant here.” Some
distance below the cornfield was the cellar of an ice-house, in which
five hundred Union soldiers were buried. And yet these were but a
portion of the slain; all the surrounding fields were scarred with
graves.
Returning to Fredericksburg, I visited the plain northwest of the town,
also memorable for much hard fighting on that red day of December. I
found a pack of government wagons there, an encampment of teamsters, and
a few Yankee soldiers, who told me they were tired of doing nothing, and
“three times as fast for going home” as they were before the war closed.
In the midst of this plain, shaded by a pleasant grove, stands a brown
brick mansion said to have been built by George Washington for his
mother’s family. Not far off is a monument erected to Mary, the mother
of Washington, whose mortal remains rest here. It is of marble,
measuring some nine feet square and fifteen in height, unfinished,
capped with a mat of weeds, and bearing no inscription but the names of
visitors who should have blushed to desecrate the tomb of the venerated
dead. The monument has in other ways been sadly misused; in the first
place, by balls which nicked and chipped it during the battle; and
afterwards by relic-hunters, who, in their rage for carrying away some
fragment of it, have left scarce a corner of cornice or pilaster
unbroken.
I had afterwards many walks about Fredericksburg, the most noteworthy of
which was a morning-visit to the Lacy House, where Burnside had his
head-quarters. Crossing the Rappahannock on the pontoon bridge, I
climbed the stone steps leading from terrace to terrace, and reached the
long-neglected grounds and the old-fashioned Virginia mansion. It was
entirely deserted. The doors were wide open, or broken from their
hinges, the windows smashed, the floors covered with rubbish, and the
walls with the names of soldiers and regiments, or pictures cut from the
illustrated newspapers.
The windows command a view of Fredericksburg and the battle-field; and
there I stood, and saw in imagination the fight reënacted,—the
pontoniers at their work in the misty morning, the sharpshooters in
rifle-pits and houses opposite driving them from it with their murderous
fire, the shelling of the town, the troops crossing, the terrible
roaring battle, the spouting flames, the smoke, the charging parties,
and the horrible slaughter;—I saw and heard it all again, and fancied
for a time that I was the commanding general, whose eyes beheld, and
whose wrung heart felt, what he would gladly have given his own life to
prevent or retrieve.