BURNSIDE'S FREDERICKSBURG CAMPAIGN
It has already been related that at the end of the battle of
Sharpsburg, or Antietam, neither army cared to renew the contest.
The two confronted each other within deadly firing distance for the
space of twenty-four hours, doing nothing whatever. Apparently each
had so far had enough of such fighting that neither cared to take the
initiative for its renewal, yet each was ready enough to meet the other
should that other care to assail it.
At the end of this waiting time Lee slowly retired towards the Potomac,
McClellan not caring to pursue, and finally crossing the river the
Confederates went into camp near Winchester.
So far from planning either to press Lee or to move by some other route
upon Richmond, McClellan seems to have thought that he had done quite
all that could be expected of him, in turning back the Confederate
invasion of the region north of the Potomac. It appears from his
dispatches to Mr. Lincoln that he purposed with his enormously superior
army to take the defensive, post himself on the Potomac and stand
ready to meet any second attempt that Lee might make to invade the
North or to strike at Washington. Even for such a service he did not
deem his army large enough, though it greatly outnumbered Lee's, or
sufficiently well equipped, though its equipment was notably superior
to any that its adversary ever had, either before or after that time.
Instead of planning a campaign McClellan devoted himself to the making
of multitudinous requisitions and ceaseless complaints.
Precious weeks of perfect campaigning weather were thus wasted,
McClellan lying idly upon the north bank of the Potomac while Lee
rested and reinforced his army near Winchester.
But if McClellan did nothing Lee was not so supine. He did not indeed
begin a new campaign or bring on a battle, but he again awakened
apprehension of invasion at the North by sending Stuart--the same
cavalier who had ridden around McClellan's army near Richmond--to
make a raid into Maryland and Pennsylvania which seemed for the time
at least to be the precursor of a new movement of invasion by the
Confederates.
On the tenth of October, with 1,800 picked cavalry men and some
light field-pieces, Stuart crossed the river at Williamsport, above
McClellan's position, made a rapid march to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania,
and thence swept eastward and southward, riding unmolested entirely
around McClellan and returning to Virginia on the thirteenth by passing
the river again below Harper's Ferry.
He brought off a rich store of ammunition, supplies and many valuable
horses, but the capture of these was neither the primary object nor the
chief result of the daring raid. It was intended for moral effect, and
it wrought such effect in a marked degree. It awakened apprehension at
the North, and it showed Lee to be still capable of an aggressiveness
of which McClellan was obviously very greatly in fear. At the North as
well as at the South it gave to the situation, after the late campaign,
the appearance of one in which the Confederates seemed in better
condition for further operations than their adversaries were.
Mr. Lincoln renewed his urgency for McClellan's advance, and finally
succeeded in inducing him to cross the river and to seem at least to
take the offensive. But after crossing into Virginia, McClellan did
nothing effective. The history of Mr. Lincoln's effort to set the
splendid Army of the Potomac in motion again, and the correspondence
incident to that effort, are interesting, but they do not come within
the purview of this present work.
Wearying at last of the inactivity Lincoln ordered General Burnside
to take command of the Army of the Potomac, as McClellan's successor,
and the new commander decided to move down the left bank of the
Rappahannock and attempt a march upon Richmond by a short route.
Establishing his base of supplies at Acquia creek on the Potomac, only
a few miles from Fredericksburg, with a railroad connection between,
Burnside sat down on the north side of the Rappahannock, opposite
Fredericksburg, the last of his columns reaching that point on the
twentieth of November. Lee, moving upon a parallel line, reached
Fredericksburg about the same time, and formed his lines to resist his
enemy's contemplated advance.
Lee's army at that time numbered about 68,000 men, but before the
battle it was swelled by reinforcements to nearly 80,000, and again
reduced by detachments, to 68,000 or less. Burnside's force numbered
about 120,000, with 147 guns, about twice Lee's strength in artillery.
Fredericksburg lies upon fairly level ground, immediately upon the
southern bank of the Rappahannock, which at that point is not fordable
at any season. In rear of the town and within cannon range, there
is a line of bold hills beginning upon the river above the city and
stretching in a curve around the town to the eastward where they
gradually diminish in height and finally disappear.
Lee seized upon these hills and hurriedly fortified them, placing his
artillery in effective positions and shielding his men with strong
earthworks. Here he concentrated the greater part of his army under
Longstreet on the left or west, and Jackson on the right or east, while
D. H. Hill, with the remainder of the Confederate army was posted at
Port Royal, twenty miles further down the river, eastward, to meet and
repel any attempt that might be made to cross there and turn the flank
of Lee's position.
This detachment of Hill with a strong force to a point so far away
as to forbid his direct coöperation with the rest of the army during
the battle, seriously diminished Lee's effective strength, but
the advantage of position which he possessed and the advantage of
fighting behind breastworks which his enemy must assail from the open,
compensated him somewhat.
Burnside's first difficult task was to get his army across the river.
This he could do only by the use of frail pontoon bridges of which
he purposed to lay five--three in front of the city and two below.
The pontoon trains were slow in arriving, and when they came it was
for a time impossible to put the pontoons into position, owing to the
destructive fire of the sleepless sharpshooters Lee had posted along
the banks to interfere with the work. In consequence of this and other
difficulties it was not until the tenth of December that a crossing
was made which Burnside had confidently expected to make more than a
fortnight earlier.
In the meanwhile Lee had busied himself night and day in strengthening
his position in every possible way, and he was soon fully prepared for
the contest.
Burnside's first assault was made about ten o'clock on the morning of
December 13. It was made in two columns, striking simultaneously, the
one against Lee's right and the other against his left. The assault
upon his right was at first attended with a partial success, but
Jackson hurried troops to the breach and quickly hurled the assailants
back in confusion, pursuing them nearly to the river's bank where a
heavy artillery fire checked his progress. The Federal assault on that
part of the Confederate line was not renewed during the day.
From official reports and otherwise, it appears that Burnside at first
intended to direct his main attack upon this right wing of Lee's army.
The hills there were lower and far less defensible than were those on
the Confederate left, and offered, certainly, a much more tempting
opportunity to the Federal commander. It was without doubt the weakest
point in Lee's line--the point which the Federals might have assailed
with greatest hope of success or at least of inflicting the heaviest
loss upon their foes. But, for some reason which has never been clearly
explained, Burnside changed his plan of battle almost at the last
moment, and directed his heaviest columns against Marye's Heights,
the well-nigh impregnable stronghold of Lee's left wing. Here Lee had
his batteries and a host of infantry strongly posted in formidable
earthworks on top of the hills, in a position of great advantage.
For a body of troops to charge up Marye's Heights, bristling as they
did with hostile and well served cannon, and defended by tens of
thousands of veteran riflemen, was a task that might well have appalled
even such sturdy fighters as composed the Army of the Potomac. But
the matter was made more difficult by another peculiarity of the
ground. Looked at from below, the hill seemed to present a smooth
surface, ascending gently toward the works that defended it. But this
appearance was deceptive. On the side of the hill well in advance of
Lee's main line, and running athwart the Federal line of advance, there
was a sunken road, faced with a stone wall, which formed as perfect
a breastwork as any that an engineer could have constructed there.
Into this sunken road Lee threw about two thousand riflemen, who lay
there perfectly concealed from view and as well protected against
adverse fire as men using rifles can be. Their orders were to withhold
their fire until the enemy charging up the slope under a destructive
cannonade from above, and thinking of the works at the top as the first
obstacle to be encountered, should reach a point a score or so of yards
in front of the sunken road, whence they could be swept away like
dust before a housemaid's broom. It was as deadly a trap as could be
imagined, and its concealment was perfect. Yet when the Federal general
decided to make his main attack upon Lee's left, there was no course
open to him but to take this doubly defended hill by assault or suffer
fearful disaster, as he did, in a futile attempt to do so. For the
nature of the ground on Lee's farther left rendered it impossible to
turn his flank or try conclusions with him otherwise than by a direct
charge upon Marye's Heights.
The first attack was made by French's division. It was already
suffering terribly under the fire from the hilltop, when it came upon
the sunken road and was instantly swept away by a hailstorm of bullets.
Retiring, French left about one half of his men on the field, dead or
wounded.
Hancock charged next with five thousand men and was driven back with a
loss of two thousand or more.
The exact nature of the case was not even yet understood. The position
in the sunken road was still masked to the Federal commanders. But
French's and Hancock's attempts had conclusively shown that no courage,
no determination, no heroism however high, could enable mortal men to
carry that hill by assault. Nevertheless Burnside persisted where a
wiser leader would either have withdrawn or have changed his plan of
battle. He sent another, and another, and still another division into
that fire of hell, only to see them instantly hurled back, shattered
fragments of most gallant commands, beaten, broken and well-nigh
destroyed by reason of a blundering obstinacy on the part of their
commanding general.
Finally Hooker was ordered to make another attempt--the sixth of those
futile and bloody charges. He pointed out to Burnside the uselessness
of the effort and begged him to abandon without further needless
sacrifice of gallant men's lives, an operation which had already been
proved to be hopeless.
In a blind rage Burnside seemed unable to comprehend what his
subordinates saw clearly enough. He insisted upon sending Hooker's
command also into that slaughter pen. They rushed forward,--four
thousand as brave fellows as ever fought in battle--and a few minutes
later seventeen hundred of them lay stretched upon the field, their
bodies riddled with Confederate bullets, while their comrades, unable
to achieve the impossible, fell back as the remnants of the other
divisions had done before.
The Confederate war furnished two conspicuous manifestations of supreme
heroism on the part of large bodies of men--one upon one side, the
other upon the other. Pickett's charge at Gettysburg was one of these.
This series of six charges up Marye's Heights was the other.
When the sixth assault ended as its predecessors had done, the time had
manifestly come to end the battle. A wiser commander would have ended
it much earlier, indeed. Having lost 12,353 men in an ill-directed
contest Burnside withdrew to the river bank, baffled and beaten beyond
recovery.
The Army of the Potomac had won all the glory for itself that heroic
conduct can give in the absence of victory, but it had need now of
rest, recruitment and a new commander.
Burnside was clearly not equal to the task of commanding such an army
in a contest with such an adversary as Robert E. Lee. He had himself
passed precisely that judgment upon his own capacities when on three
former occasions the command of the Army of the Potomac was offered
to him. But now that he had accepted that command and had led to
disastrous defeat what somebody at the time characterized as "the
finest army on the planet," disappointment and chagrin seem for the
moment to have unseated his reason. He refused to recognize the extent
of the disaster he had suffered or the conspicuousness and completeness
of his defeat. His army was torn and broken as no other great army
on either side had been before. It was weary with futile battling,
discouraged by a failure that had involved terrible losses, and the
fact that it was not demoralized was due only to the splendid courage
and devotion of the soldiers themselves. Worse than all it had lost
confidence in the capacity of its leader.
Nevertheless Burnside, reckless of any consequences that might follow,
was determined that night to renew the battle on the following morning,
himself leading his own former corps, the Ninth, in still another
desperate attempt to carry Marye's Heights. Earnest protests and
persuasions succeeded at last in inducing him to abandon this purpose,
and after remaining inactive for a day on the bank of the river, he
withdrew his army, under cover of night, to the other side of the river
and the fearfully disastrous Fredericksburg campaign was at an end.
Military critics have wondered much that Lee, whose loss in the battle
had been only 5,309 men, and whose troops were almost wild with the
enthusiasm of victory, permitted his badly beaten adversary to remain
unmolested on the southern bank of the stream for twenty-four hours
and then quietly to retire. Burnside's position and the condition of
his army strongly invited attack. He had a wide and deep river behind
him, with only a frail pontoon bridge spanning it. Had he been defeated
there by assault on the part of the victors there would have been no
way of escape open to him. Destruction or surrender must have followed.
On the other hand, his force still heavily outnumbered Lee's and it
was in no way demoralized. Defeated and discouraged as it was its
spirit was unbroken, and had Lee left his works and assailed it in the
open, the issue of the conflict might have been very uncertain. It is
alleged that Lee's lieutenants urged a tempestuous assault, and that
Lee's chief reason for rejecting the advice was born of his hope that
Burnside would himself on the next day renew the attempt to dislodge
the Confederates from their well-nigh impregnable position.
However that may be, Lee did not in fact assume the offensive; Burnside
retired during darkness to the farther side of the river and the two
armies settled themselves in winter quarters, Lee presently sending
large bodies of men to the southwest to reinforce the armies there,
where active warfare was in progress, and still more active warfare
threatened.
The military operations of the season that thus closed had been in
every way remarkable. Four distinct campaigns had been fought, all of
them severe, and all marked by brilliant strategy and heroic conduct on
the part of the troops on either side. McClellan's siege of Richmond,
which had filled the South with gloomy apprehension, had been broken in
a series of bloody and impressive battles, and the Army of the Potomac
had been forced to withdraw for the defense of Washington.
Pope's campaign with his Army of Virginia had been conspicuously
brought to naught by brilliant strategy and desperate fighting.
Lee's invasion of Maryland had for a time reversed the former order of
things, putting the Federals on the defensive. It had ended at last in
a battle so indecisive that both sides claimed it as a victory. Finally
Burnside's well planned but badly executed Fredericksburg campaign
had resulted in very conspicuous defeat and failure after one of the
bloodiest battles of the war.
The net result of the four campaigns was one of very great advantage to
the Confederates. The gloomy apprehension with which they had looked
forward to that summer's military operations was changed to exultant
joy and confidence as they contemplated the situation when the work
of the year was over. They had discovered a commander for whom their
adversary had as yet found no match in his mastery of the art of war.
They were reinspirited by the results achieved and were full of
confidence for the future.
On the other side, the North rejoiced in the splendid fighting quality
of the Army of the Potomac, as demonstrated in the Seven Days' battles,
at Manassas, at Antietam, and most of all, at Fredericksburg. The
danger which at one time seemed so imminently to threaten their capital
and the cities farther north, had been averted, and they had confidence
that the coming spring would bring results in Virginia as pleasing to
them as those that had been achieved by Grant in the west during the
year that was coming to an end.
The struggle of the giants had but just begun.