“See there! A field officer has been struck by one of the missiles and a couple of men who have raised him to his feet are calling loudly for more help to get him off the field. As the line advances up the slope, men wounded and dead drop from the ranks.” - Union private Ben Borton - Martin, Jeremy, Storming Marye’s Heights, Unseen Histories
“When the first column reached a point about six hundred yards from the lines, the batteries opened simultaneously as though fired by a flash of electricity. The roar of musketry joined the bellowing artillery and the whole earth trembled.” - Confederate Captain A. Giles - Martin, Jeremy, Storming Marye’s Heights, Unseen Histories
No battle of the Civil War carries with it as much horrid desperation and hopeless slaughter as the battle of Fredericksburg, and the Union’s useless charges up Marye’s Heights in particular.
The Confederates were dug in along a sunken road part way up Marye’s Heights, which was nothing more than a low hill, devoid of any trees or cover, at the edge of the city. The Union assaulted up this hill on a cold, drizzly December day, one brigade at a time. The Confederate muskets and cannons shredded each assault, one after the other.
The Union men stood in neat lines, flags snapping in the wind, and watched as the brigade in front of them went to its death. Each man waited his turn, knowing he, too, would be going up that awful hill.
It’s hard to picture the Fredericksburg battlefield today. Unlike Antietam or Gettysburg or Shiloh, all preserved by the Battlefield Trust, Marye’s Heights has been developed over with suburbs. There is a new stone wall put up by the National Park Service along a portion of the Heights to commemorate the battle, but the actual historic stone wall is long gone.
When you’re standing at the new stone wall you can barely see any of the battlefield. What was a long sloping clearing in December of 1862 is today houses and streets and parked cars. A visitor’s parking lot is located a few yards from the stone wall, which is roughly the extent of the Union advance in the battle.
It was a lot different that fateful December, more than 160 years ago.
The Battle of Fredericksburg primer
It was the end of the second year of the American Civil War. A massive Union army of 122,000 troops under the command of General Ambrose Burnside were marching on Richmond, Virginia, capital of the Confederacy.
In their way stood the important mill town of Fredericksburg, where one of the great military tragedies of history was about to play out.
Burnside had to take Fredericksburg in order to get his army across the Rappahanock River, which formed a natural defensive barrier for any attack on Richmond from the east. Fredericksburg was also an important supply hub for the Confederacy, which gave it a strategic importance for both sides.
While the Army of Virginia was led by the brilliant General Robert E. Lee, the Union’s Army of the Potomac was in new hands. General Ambrose Burnside had just been given command after Lincoln sacked General McClellan.
Political infighting
There had been a lot of infighting among the Union upper command, leading to Burnside’s appointment. General George McClellan was a political animal who had the White House in his sights. He had been immensely popular with the troops but after several humiliating defeats and the pyrrhic victory at Antietam, President Lincoln fired him.
Lincoln urged Burnside to take his place, a role the General did not want. Burnside was a good second in command but knew he lacked the skills and charisma to command an entire army in the field. However, Lincoln persisted and Burnside acquiesed.
Lincoln himself was under pressure from the public to do something to end this war. The conflict was never supposed to have dragged on this long and with such bloodshed. The public of the northern states were astounded. The upstart Confederacy of slave-owning southern states were whomping northern armies. These states were supposed to be poorer, less civilized and certainly not on the same level as the industrialized north. Instead, they had proven to be tough, smart and able to fight on multiple fronts.
But aside from a few victories in the west, where General Grant was making gains along the Mississippi, the main theater of the war in the east was clearly in the Confederacy’s favour. Governors were grumbling. The public was angry. Tens of thousands of soldiers had already been slaughtered in fruitless battles and there was nothing to show for it.
Lincoln pressured Burnside for a campaign into Virginia to deliver a major victory for the Union.
The plan
Burnside’s plan was to march south from present-day West Virginia and capture the town of Fredericksburg, which would get his army across the Rappahannock River and cut a vital railway line from Richmond. From there, he would march on Richmond. He hoped to draw Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s army out into the open fields north of Richmond where his much larger force could destroy it.
Burnside, an engineer at heart, devised a plan to use pontoon bridges for the assault on Fredericksburg. Once the town was in Union hands, he could use it as a base of supply for the operation towards Richmond.
He even made a feint near the town of Warrenton, Virginia, hoping to trick Lee into thinking the attack was coming from a different direction. The wily General Lee was not fooled. A quick scan of topographical maps showed him the most likely route Burnside would need to take, and Fredericksburg was clearly the best place to block him.
The town
Fredericksburg was a large town in 1862 and a major industrial hub for the Confederacy. It was (and still is) situated along the Rappahannock River which flows out to the Atlantic Ocean. This river provided excellent power for several lumber and flour mills. There were rail lines, barges, warehouses, and a major merchants hall there in 1862, as well as more than 5,000 residents and hundreds of houses. The entire town was surrounded by farms.
The town ran from north to south along a bend in the Rappahannock. To the north of the center of the town was a long, sloping rise called Marye’s Heights, after a local who had settled there the previous century. It was mostly farmland along this hill, with a canal at the bottom near the edge of town and a sunken road partway up the rise where farmers carts travelled to and from town. A stone wall ran along this sunken road to keep cows in the field. Cows grazed along the slope.
To the south of town the land rose up sharply and then flattened out into long stretches of flat farm fields divided by stands of trees. Farmers roads criss-crossed the land. There were several farm houses dotted here and there. Fredericksburg itself was within sight and could be reached with a short walk.
The Army of the Potomac
Burnside’s Army of the Potomac had 122,000 troops in seven corps, divided into three “grand divisions” for this particular operations.
Right Grand Division - Major General Sumner
II Corps - Maj. Gen. Couch
IX Corps - Maj. Gen. Willcox
Center Grand Division - Major General Joseph Hooker
III Corps - Maj. Gen. Stoneman
V Corps - Maj. Gen. Dan Butterfield
Left Grand Division - Major General Franklin
I Corps - Maj. Gen. Reynolds
VI Corps - Maj. Gen. “Baldy” Smith
XII Corps in reserve - Maj. Gen. Slocum
There were also three brigades of cavalry, one per Grand Division, for a total of 9,000 mounted troops.
Burnside’s army captured Falmouth, just north of Fredericksburg, and things looked to be going well. Union spotters in hot air balloons were peering across the river and realized there were only 500 Confederate soldiers on the other side. Burnside could have gotten across the river, swollen now from late autumn rains.
But the army’s pontoon bridges were nowhere to be seen. Burnside had prepared for this, and had brought 240 army engineers with him in order to cross the river. But bungling with the supply and logistics departments back in Washington meant the pontoon bridges, and the horses to pull them, were still sitting in a warehouse.
Burnside inexplicably froze. He seems to have become overwhelmed by indecision, confused as to what to do next. After a couple of days, he began marching his massive army south, nearing Fredericksburg.
This pause and the slow march was all that General Lee needed.
The Army of Northern Virginia
Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was battle-hardened and in high spirits, although much smaller than the Union army that approached. He had 72,000 men and several hundred cannon divided into two corps of nine divisions, and a division of cavalry.
*Note: Confederate divisions took the name of their commander, rather than being numbered.
First Corps - Lt. General James Longstreet
Maj. Gen. McLaws Division
Maj. Gen. Anderson’s Division
Maj. Gen. Pickett’s Division
Maj. Gen. Hood’s Division
Brig. Gen. Ransom’s Division
Second Corps - Lt. General “Stonewall” Jackson
Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill’s Division
Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill’s Division
Maj. Gen. Early’s Division
Maj. Gen. Taliaferro’s Division
Maj. Gen. Jeb Stuart’s Cavalry Division
General Robert E. Lee
Lee was one of the most capable officers on either side of the conflict. He had been a lifelong officer with the United States Army, had helped lead the victory over Mexico in 1847, and had served as the commandant of West Point Military Academy. He was one of the highest-ranking officers in the army when the southern states suddenly seceded in late 1860.
President Lincoln had asked Lee to lead the Union armies in this civil war, but Lee, a Virginian, declined. He said he could not wage war on his own home, and resigned from the US army, taking up arms for the Confederacy instead. He commanded several coastal garrisons at first, but was put in command of the entire Army of Northern Virginia in 1862.
Lee had reservations about the war, and considered the entire idea of the Confederacy a suicidal endeavour.
“Secession is nothing but revolution against the legitimate government, for which our founding fathers fought so hard to establish.” - General Robert E. Lee in private letters
Lee himself was not a slaveholder. Virginia was also not a full-on slave state like in the deep south, being more akin to Maryland. That is, Virginians who owned slaves could keep them, but no new slaves could be bought in the state. Virginia also imposed a five-year limit on the ownership of any slaves inherited from an estate, after which they needed to be set free.
There is a caveat here. While Lee did not own slaves, and his duties in the army made slavery unimportant to him, his wife was a different matter. She was the granddaughter of George Washington. Mary Anna Randolph Custis’ father owned more than 100 slaves. They were the descendants of the slaves owned by Martha Washington. Lee claims he freed most of these when his father-in-law passed, and paid for some to travel to Liberia, but there is no evidence of this.
Lee would most definitely have been used to seeing slaves around, even if he was not particularly enamoured of the institution. He seems indifferent about it. The cause of the Confederacy was rooted in the institution of slavery, yet Lee, its most iconic figure, was not. His cause was Virginia, and only Virginia.
General Lee proved to be a superb tactician and leader. He led the Confederates in victory after victory over the numerically superior federal armies. His personal charm became famous on both sides of the lines. His men cheered him when he passed, riding on a white horse. He never wore the uniform of a general, prefering the plain uniform and insignia of a Virginian colonel. He often wore a straw farmer’s hat.
Lee was a professional military man and put great emphasis on supply and logisitics.
“The amateur studies tactics. The professional studies logistics.” - Gen. Lee
He put great emphasis on individual performance in his army. He placed superb commanders in key positions, men like “Stonewall” Jackson, James Longstreet, Jeb Stuart and George Pickett. He trusted them to do their jobs and rarely micromanaged.
“Never trust a man to lead others who cannot lead himself.” - Gen. Lee
He also felt a deep connection to the rank and file of his army, and knew hundreds of his men’s names. He mourned their losses after each battle and often spent time comforting the wounded at the field hospitals. He wrote several letters home to the wives of dead privates and sergeants.
Yet all this only gives us a brief glimpse of the complicated and deeply philosophical man who was General Robert E. Lee. This was the man who the nervous and woefully unqualified Union commander, General Burnside, was facing. And Lee was ready for him.
“It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we might grow too fond of it.” - General Lee
The crossing of the Rappahanock
Burnside’s engineers began constructing several large pontoon bridges from the east bank of the river on December 11, 1862, just as the first snowflakes of the winter fell. The pontoon equipment had finally arrived.
The engineers instantly came under intense fire from across the river. A large stone mill and several houses were built right up to the banks of the river, and the orderly streets of Fredericksburg lay behind them, lined with homes and shops. Confederate sharpshooters in these buildings opened up on the Union engineers.
These were Mississippians from McClaw’s division. They kept up a steady fire all through the morning of that first day and took a terrible toll on the engineers, who kept up working despite the mounting losses. Men who were hit fell into the freezing waters and their bodies carried away by the swift current.
Burnside ordered an artillery bombardment of the city in response, and 150 Union guns opened up. The Mississippi men took cover in cellars while the cannon shells blasted the town to pieces in what became one of the first modern area bombardments of a city. The engineers finished three pontoon bridges over the following night while explosions blasted homes and warehouses to pieces.
Then the Union troops charged over the river and into the town.
This was the first major urban combat in American history, and the first of the modern era. Union troops slowly pushed the Confederate troops back, house by house. They fought with bayonets in hallways and kitchens. They shot at each other from bedroom windows. But the weight of the Union army coming across the river was too much, and McLaw withdrew his division from the city.
Battle in the fog
The next day, December 13, was rainy and overcast. A dense fog had settled on the farm fields to the south of the city, which was where Major General John Reynolds’ I Corps was headed, led by the First Division of Major General George Meade.
Meade’s 4500 men ran right into Stonewall Jackson’s Corps and elements of Jeb Stuart’s cavalry division. There was intense fighting in the swirling fog, which gradually began to lift in the late morning.
Jackson had 35,000 battle-hardened Confederates dug in along a wooded ridge on the western edge of the farm fields. Meade’s 4,500 men, many of whom were new recruits from Michigan, found themselves under withering volley fire as the fog lifted and they were caught in the open fields. But one of Meade’s brigades of Pennsylvanians was able to exploit an unexpected gap in the Confederate lines, and they overran a brigade of Georgians in the thick woods and killed their commander. The Georgians fled in a panic, opening a massive breach in Lee’s lines.
Meade sent several runners back to Burnside, asking for reinforcements to exploit the breach he had created, but Burnside never responded. Jackson was able to rush several regiments of South Carolinians and Floridians to the breach and they began to close it, bit by bit. Without reinforcements, Meade was forced to pull his Pennsylvanian boys out and retreated back to the still-burning town.
Burnside now looked to the north of the town, and the grassy knoll known as Marye’s Heights for his breakthrough.
Slaughter on the heights
“Send a division, or more.” Burnside commanded Major General Edwin Sumner, commanding the Right Grand Division, in his orders to seize Marye’s Heights. Sumner ordered the II Corps to move up. Leading the corps was Brigadier General French’s 3rd Division, made up of the 1st Pennsylvania and 3rd Pennsylvania brigades. Sumner stacked up the brigades from his other divisions behind these leading men.
The route to the top of the heights from the town of Fredericksburg was worrying for the men who stood at the front, waiting for the order to advance.
They would have to squeeze out from between buildings into a low ravine that was traversed by a canal. A narrow rampart crossed the canal partway down the ravine and led to the open field at the base of the heights. The men would need to squeeze through here and reassemble in full view of the enemy, and within range of Confederate artillery.
The men stood in lines. They wore dark blue greatcoats in the cold December morning. Blue kepi caps adorned with brass and silver insignia sat on their heads. They had .58 calibre Springfield muskets slung over their right shoulders, and pouches with bullets, powder and primer on their hips. The front ranks carried several flags — their regimental flag, their brigade flag, their state flag, and in the center, Old Glory itself, the Stars and Stripes.
“We saw that splendid division of Federal troops…four long, dark blue columns, with Old Glory proudly waving over every regiment. The first column moved steadily on, as if going on dress parade instead of to their death.” - Captain Valerius Giles, 4th Texas Infantry - Martin, Jeremy, Storming Marye’s Heights, Unseen Histories
At 11:00 am on the morning of December 13th, 1862, General Sumner gave the order to advance against Marye’s Heights. The Pennsylvanians leading the attack stepped off, and all formation quickly fell apart as they filed down into the ravine. They pushed and jostled each other to get over the canal as quickly as possible, to give the Confederate gunners less time to target them.
But Rebel artillery opened up anyways. Lee had nearly all his guns lining Marye’s Heights and along the crest of a flanking hill, creating a deadly cross fire. The Confederate gunners had a birds-eye view of the entire battlefield. They began to pour shell fire and solid shot down onto the Pennsylvanians.
General Longstreet was in command of the Confederate forces around Marye’s Heights, and he had been worried about the mass of Union troops assembling in the town. His chief of artillery, Colonel Alexander, had reassured him.
“A chicken could not live on that field when we open up on it.” - Col. Edward Porter Alexander, chief of artillery for the Army of Northern Virginia
The Union soldiers were torn apart by shells as they struggled to reform a line at the base of the heights. 2,000 men had stepped out from the town, and they had barely made it out of the ravine and already a quarter of them were down.
With flags snapping in the cold air, the survivors, now in a long ragged line two ranks deep, stepped off and began to march up the hill. Artillery smashed into them. Solid shot cannon balls bounced along the grass and tore off legs and smashed kneecaps. Soon, they were in range of canister shot — a canister filled with big lead balls fired out of the cannon like a giant shotgun blast. The canister ripped gaping holes in the Union line.
At 125 yards, the Confederate infantry opened up with their rifles. These were McLaw’s men, made up of regiments from Georgia, Louisiana and Virginia. There were 7,000 of them lined up along a stone wall halfway up the heights. 2,000 of them were firing the rifles down into the mass of Union men, while the other men reloaded. They fired again, and again, and again.
Smoke from the firing enveloped the battlefield. The two Pennsylvania brigades disappeared into this maelstrom. No one came back out of the cloud. Sumner ordered the next brigade to go in. The New Jersey boys were next to go.
They went in, scrambled out of the canal and met the same storm of lead. The men pushed up the hill, leaning forward as if against a strong wind. The firing from the cannons and the muskets along the stone wall blasted them to shreds. Bodies littered the hill. Arms and legs were torn off. Torsos with giant bloody holes torn in them tumbled down the wet grass. The cries of the wounded were muffled by the thunder of the guns.
Brigade after brigade went up that hill into the smoke and fire, one after the other. Very few men trickled back. Each brigade waited its turn to go, watching as the one before went up.
“In a few moments the scene before us was enveloped in smoke, and we could see nothing but a seething, roaring crater of smoke and fire; 'splendid murder' reigned supreme there.” - Confederate witness to the battle - Martin, Jeremy, Storming Marye’s Heights, Unseen Histories
Next it was the turn of the Irish Brigade, the “Fighting 69th,” one of the elite units of the Union Army consisting of Irish immigrants. These men had brought their families to America, and had exchanged their lives by signing up at the dock in New York for their wives and children’s right to make America their home. Their blue flag with a green shamrock was known on both sides.
The Irishmen stepped off and charged into the storm at a run, rifles lowered and bayonets fixed. They were blasted by the fire from the defenders, but they continued on. They used different tactics. They took cover where they could find it, and charged up the hill in small groups, from cover to cover. Some provided covering fire as they advanced. These Irishmen made it to within 10 feet of the stone wall. They found the body of one of the Irishmen after the battle. He was laying facedown, arm outstretched, hand touching the wall.
The Confederate riflemen fired and fired. The shooters aimed and shot, and then handed the rifle to a man behind him, while another handed him a freshly loaded gun. Teams of men clustered around behind them, loading rifles.
Some of the shooters were crying. It was pure murder, one of the Virginians later recounted.
“This wasn’t war. This was murder. Pure, bloody murder, and I was the one doin’ it.” - A Confederate soldier known only as “Pete,” in a letter found years later.
The famed Iron Brigade went up next. These were tough men from the midwest - Wisconsin, Minnesota and Indiana. The brigade was the most feared in the Union army. They wore black hardee hats, rather than the blue kepi. They carried a white flag with a black German Iron Cross. They were known to never retreat, and almost always took their objectives. They were also known to never take prisoners, making them a terrifying opponent for the young Southern boys facing them.
The Iron Brigade went up the heights. They were devastated by fire like the other brigades. But Brigadier John Gibbon, commanding the brigade and leading from the front, ordered his men to hit the ground. They dropped to their bellies and burrowed themselves as far down into the cold wet earth as they could. They used the bodies from the previous brigades as cover, creating a wall of corpses to shield them from Confederate fire. They couldn’t advance, but at least they wouldn’t all be killed.
All in all, 36 brigades went up Marye’s Heights that day. Burnside refused to give the order to stop. The Union army was decimated on that hill. General Hooker had pleaded with Burnside to stop the attacks but Burnside once again froze with indecision. Thousands of men died because the commander was in over his head.
"There they come!" some one shouted, and looting back toward the city, we saw another long line of reinforcements charging up the slope. Lustily they were cheered as they advanced, and I noticed a wounded man sitting upon the ground waving his cap and cheering with the rest. “
“Until nightfall, brigade after brigade charged across that field of death, to the dead-line, only to suffer disaster and defeat.” - A Union soldier who had taken cover behind some bodies on the hill. - Martin, Jeremy, Storming Marye’s Heights, Unseen Histories
The coldest night
Burnside finally called off the attacks as the sun set, just after 4 pm. The temperature dropped below freezing. There were thousands of wounded men out there on the heights. The survivors, including the men of the Iron Brigade, quietly picked their way back to the town in the darkness. Shots from alert Rebel snipers behind the wall rang out now and again.
The thunder of the day was replaced by a low moaning in the darkness. Men cried in pain, others pleaded for help. The Confederate soldiers were apalled at the carnage they had wrought, and one Sergeant from South Carolina gathered canteens from his companions and hopped over the wall.
He went from wounded man to wounded man in the dark, giving them water. He returned three times to refill the canteens, and then went back into the darkness to help his stricken enemies. The “Angel of Fredericksburg” has a statue to him today.
“The dead were all there. They lay in heaps, crossed and piled and in every imaginable position, all cold, rigid and stiffly frozen. We never saw one-half the battlefield, but we saw enough, and I was glad when a little, dried-up Georgia captain very peremptorily ordered us back to our command,” - Confederate veteran recounted this story. - Martin, Jeremy, Storming Marye’s Heights, Unseen Histories
The men dying on the hill were amazed to see a rare appearance of aurora borealis in the sky above them. The clouds cleared and suddenly the sky was glowing with dancing blues and greens.
Morning arose on December 14th and most of those men had passed away during the night.
Another defeat for the Union
Burnside ordered a general retreat back to Maryland at dawn on the 14th, marking the end of yet another military disaster for the Union. They left behind more than 10,000 troops, and had 30,000 wounded in their ambulance train. They had lost nine senior commanders. It was one of the bloodiest defeats in American history.
The south was overjoyed as news of the victory spread. The Union had been turned back from its attempt to invade the Confederacy, with crippling losses. Tennessee declared the 13th of December a state holiday. There were fetes and fireworks in Louisiana.
For the north, it was another in a long string of bloody defeats. People gathered at churches and post offices to read casualty lists as they were posted. Families from Wisconsin to Massachusetts anxiously waited for news of their loved ones serving in the army. The wailing of women upon learning of their husband’s or son’s fate became a common sound in towns and cities across the north.
Lincoln came under intense attack from the press and from his own Republican caucus in both Houses.
“The President is not a war leader. He is a butcher.” - The Cincinnati Herald
Lincoln is reported to have had an emotional breakdown. He reclused himself for two days following the battle, although he continued to have casualty lists delivered to him with his supper.
“If there is a place worse than hell, I am in it.” - President Abraham Lincoln, to his diary following the battle
Ambrose Burnside was sacked and replaced with General TJ Hooker, who himself would lead the Army of the Potomac in another defeat in the spring. He, too, would get fired by Lincoln. General Meade would get the job, and he would keep it following his great victory at Gettysburg, seven months later.
The South lost 5,000 men at Fredericksburg, almost all of them in the initial engagements. They lost under 100 at the stone wall on Marye’s Heights, and some of those were accidental.
When the men of the Union Army of the Potomac defeated Lee at Gettysburg, following Pickett’s charge across an open field, where the Union guns tore the Confederate lines to shreds, one cheer could be heard across the battlefield. The Union men shouted “Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!” as if avenging the dead of Marye’s Heights.