The Battle of Fredericksburg

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It is just past dawn on December 11, 1862.

Along the chilly banks of the Rapahonic River, across from Fredericksburg, Virginia, Union

engineers move quietly through the dim light of a breaking day.

This past week, the long-awaited pontoons required to cross the river have finally arrived.

Now, if bridges can be assembled today, this morning, the Army of the Potomac gathered

nearby some 120,000 troops, tens of thousands of horses and mules, 300 artillery pieces,

all under the command of General Ambrose Burnside, can begin to surge into empty Fredericksburg,

and then push southward to Richmond, the Confederate capital.

But in these quiet hours on the river, as engineers struggle with numbing fingers to secure

pontoons and planking, the men freeze.

What is that?

The engineers duck for cover, scattering along the unfinished bridge.

That town over there isn't abandoned.

Rebel riflemen turns out, Mississippi and snipers hidden in houses along the riverfront

have all been watching from windows and cellars, and now every Union man out here is squarely

in their sights.

Suddenly, that straightforward crossing General Burnside had planned, seems nearly impossible.

Hi, all it's me, it's Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit, transporting us

today to the chilly weeks of November and December 1862 in the lands south of Washington, DC

and north of Richmond, Virginia, as we tell the astonishing story of the Battle of Fredericksburg.

And we'll do this under the tutelage of Chris Mikowsky, Professor of Journalism at St.

Bonaventure University in Allegheny, Go Bonnies.

He is the Copie Hill Civil War Fellow with our good friends at the American Battlefield

Trust, editor in chief of Emerging Civil War, author of more than 25 books, where does he

find the time?

Dr. Mikowsky.

Hello, Chris, nice to be with you.

Don, it is a pleasure to be back, thanks for having me.

Let's dive right in.

Late fall, 1862, we're a year and a half into the Civil War.

Where do things stand for the north?

Things have been pretty precarious because Robert E. Lee is the commander of the Army of

Northern Virginia.

He scored a series of victories that has taken him up into Maryland, and there he's finally

repulsed by the Army of the Potomac, and he falls back into Virginia.

Abraham Lincoln has been really upset that his armies have not been able to score more

victories.

He's been telling them, gosh, gosh, you've got to push forward.

And it becomes particularly important because after that Battle of Antietam in Maryland,

he issues the Emancipation Proclamation, which is going to free all the enslaved people

who are in areas of rebellion.

But in order to enforce that, you've got to have battlefield victories.

And so he really needs his army of the Potomac in the east to score a win.

And they really haven't been able to do that.

The stakes are especially high for that army.

And their commander, a guy named George McCullen, just isn't doing a whole lot to follow

up his victory, even though Lincoln's prodding him.

So that's kind of the situation as Fall begins to start to turn the winner.

Yeah.

He's been chastised, I guess, would be a word for it.

And he's soon to be fired for not pursuing the Confederates after Antietam.

I mean, that's basically what a boil is down to, right?

As far as Lincoln's concerned.

Pretty much, you know, he's, you know, McCullen has this huge army.

It does have some really significant supply issues.

McCullen is one of the great logistical geniuses of the war and should be able to fix that.

And he's pretty slow about it.

And steady spends a lot of time whining about it.

And you know, Lincoln's like, show me answers, not complaints, but Lincoln hasn't been

able to do anything about McCullen because of the fall elections.

They are midterm elections.

Lincoln's expecting to get drugged at the pole, or at least they were hoping parties

expecting to get drugged at the pole.

And McCullen's a very popular Democrat.

So do something to McCullen would really poke that behind going into those elections.

So that's also a really important dynamic.

He will be replaced by a mammal speak of a lot.

Here, Ambrose Burnside, who is reluctant himself to accept this post, believing that he

was not qualified for such a large command.

Had he been so frank with Lincoln?

He had.

In fact, he'd been offered command of the army twice before and it turned it down.

He said, it's beyond my capacity.

But by that point in the war, we have to remember Burnside has scored some important victories,

particularly along the North Carolina coast.

So he's kind of like where it's at as far as war heroes and experience and his men really

love him.

He's well respected by his peers.

But everybody sort of knows that, yeah, Burnside's amiable, but probably not up for army command.

But Lincoln finally says, if you don't take it, I'm going to give it to your chief rival,

a guy named Joe Hooker.

And that's sort of what coerces Burnside into finally reluctantly taking command.

Burnside famous for his glorious and her suit facial hair, which then goes on to become

Burnside becomes sideburns.

And here we are, living with the legacy of this man's hair for the rest of our lives.

I think about it every time I shave my sideburn.

What does the Union Army want to do at Fredericksburg?

I've placed us geographically, of course, we're south of DC.

What is the strategy here?

The idea is to really get across the river and make a mad dash at Richmond, capture the

Confederate capital.

It's the old, you know, capture the flag idea.

Fredericksburg is particularly important because there is a road network there that would facilitate

the movement of the army.

There's a railroad that would help supply the army.

And of course, you know, Fredericksburg springs up because of those transportation infrastructures

and the river that is there.

So it's a really important port.

So you know, that's why Fredericksburg exists in the first place.

That river, the Rampahannock River, is a significant barrier.

It flows from west to east.

And if Burnside's going from north to south, he's got to get across that river.

And Robert E. Lee knows that Burnside's got to get across that river and uses that river

to block him.

Weirdly, I have road across that river in a former television iteration.

And it is a big rear.

The Rampahannock.

It's no small channel of water there.

And as you get further down river, it gets wider too.

And it's affected by the tides.

So it's a really challenging water course, as you mentioned.

Yeah.

We often marvel at just a side comment here that the South just didn't march into Washington,

you see at the beginning of this war and take the capital.

But the South was equally fearful of the north doing the same for Richmond, weren't they?

Absolutely.

And the Confederate army has a little bit more flexibility as far as being able to maneuver.

Jefferson Davis, the Confederate capital, never explicitly says to Robert E. Lee,

like, you have to keep this army between the the Federals and the capital, you know?

So that allows Lee to move around a lot.

But Lincoln is always saying like, you need to defend the capital to whoever happens

to be commander of the day of the army of the Potomac.

And that becomes a real limit on their ability to move and maneuver and where they can go and when.

Where is Lee and the army of northern Virginia, not in northern Virginia?

They had fallen back into northern Virginia after Antietam.

They had split in half.

So Lee's got Stonewall, Jackson's half of the army over in the Shenandoah Valley,

sort of threatening the right flank of the federal army.

And then Lee has James Long Street fallen back a little bit,

just sort of contest any advance that the Federals make.

And this is, I think, one of Bernside's best moments because he steals a march on Robert E. Lee

and swings over to Fredericksburg from a position a little further west near the Blue Ridge Mountains.

And he gets to Fredericksburg first.

And Long Street has to react.

And Lee actually wants to send him further south to a place called the North Anna River.

And only Jefferson Davis's insistence that they defend Fredericksburg.

Does that force Lee and Long Street to go back up to Fredericksburg and block the river?

But Bernside gets to the river and he can't get across.

And this is kind of one of the great controversies of this campaign.

I've always wondered, this is really the last of the Napoleonic Wars, isn't it?

In terms of huge massive armed armies being moved around by these strategic mines.

That's really how you can characterize the Civil War in one regard.

Absolutely. And here we're still in a portion of the war where we're going to see

giant bodies of men sweeping across open fields and standing out in the open,

just taking absolutely massive casualties as they slug it out in the open.

As 1863 evolves, we're going to see more defensive warfare.

And then certainly when we get to 1864, it's nearly defensive the entire time for the Confederates.

So the journey and the crossing, let's talk about this.

A hundred thousand Union troops have to move from a place called

Warrington, Virginia near DC to Falmouth, which is on one side of the

Rebihonic and as you've mentioned, moving them across.

Take us through these maneuvers as we arrive at the point of battle.

So Bernside basically makes this sweeping quick march off to his east

and he gets to the Rebihonic.

He knows he's got to get across the river.

The Confederates have destroyed the bridges because the fedels were actually in this area

in the spring of 62 and so they've destroyed the railroad bridge, the traffic bridge.

And Bernside calls ahead to his commander up in Washington,

I'm going to need bridging materials, send them down to me.

And the army had used these bridging materials as it came south from Antietam.

So they're way up the Potomac and they have to get shifted into place.

And Bernside Superior, a guy named Henry Hallock, really doesn't see particular urgency

about the whole thing so he doesn't put the hurry up on the order.

So Bernside gets to the river, he's got the jump on Robert E. Lee

and can't get across the river because his bridging stuff is not there.

And when we talk of bridging stuff, what are you talking about?

What kind of materials?

So they have these giant hollow boats called pontoons and they're about 33 feet long.

They weigh a ton and a half.

They're huge.

They have to be carried on their own wagons.

And essentially what the engineers would do is put a pontoon into the river,

float it into place, kind of anchor it there,

then float another one in beside it.

And then they would link them using bridging materials.

So you'd have a plank road or a plank bridge

that then you could pull up behind you when you left.

So it's kind of a mobile set of bridging materials.

And for a general who knows his mandate is to move fast,

this has to be very frustrating because suddenly he's stuck

and there are Confederates across the river taking potshots at him, right?

Exactly.

And you know, there is a small force in Fredericksburg

that's able to kind of put up some sort of token resistance.

But if Burnside could just get across,

his avenue to Richmond's wide open, there it is.

And he can't.

And it's weeks before this gets resolved.

And the weather's miserable.

The pontoons have an odyssey worthy of a book all its own

to get into place.

It's miserable for these guys.

And that allows Robert E. Lee to pull into position,

block the way, and then send word to Stonewall Jackson

in the Shenandoah Valley.

Hey, I need you out here.

You need to finally shift into position

so I can consolidate the army.

Chris, every time you read about the Battle of Fredericksburg,

the issue of the snipers comes up,

you know, early in the action.

What's the importance of that?

So when the engineers start to build these pontoon bridges

on the morning of December 11th,

they get about halfway across the river

before the snipers open up.

And, you know, of course, you can't build the bridge

if you don't have the engineers.

And so the engineers all run a way to get out from cover.

And it's a way for the Confederates

to stall the federal advance across the river.

So once the firing stops, the engineers come out.

When they start building again,

they start getting shot at by the snipers.

And this back and forth happens

until finally Henry Hunt, the commander of the federal artillery,

says, let's just try to bombard the city

and drive these snipers out of the way.

But it's a real frustration for Burnside

who's hoping to get across the river quickly.

And at one point, he says the entire army

is being held by the throat by just a few snipers.

So it is really, really a huge time buyer for Lee.

Because he gets the whole day of December 11th

as a result of this delaying action by the snipers.

So the union had moved from warrant into foul

with around the middle of November,

expecting that they would get these pontoons

and move across expeditiously.

That doesn't happen.

It takes weeks for those materials to arrive.

And by the time those bridges are really built,

we're in the middle of December, aren't we?

Yeah. And Burnside is looking for options.

Does he go downriver and try to cross?

But we mentioned a second ago how problematic the river's air

should he go upriver?

But there are a lot of river crossings.

The Confederates can test.

So he decides he's just going to cross at Fredericksburg

and try to use the city as a shield.

And he has one of the most mediocre

endorsements of any general offering their own plan.

He says, if we cross there,

it'll be just as well as across any place else.

And the Confederates, we just, yeah.

And say, oh, yeah, that sounds really confident.

Inspires, man, doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

No.

But he is finally going to get things

into position where he can start to cross

in the morning of December 11th.

And that's really what's going to set the ball in motion.

So 150 federal guns

shell the buildings for four hours

to try to remove those snipers, among other things.

A landing party under Colonel Norman Hall,

regiments from Michigan and Massachusetts,

successfully do cross the rapahonic

to drive those riflemen from the bank.

And by December 12th, we are set for this battle.

For all that action that takes place in December 11th,

we have to remember like Burnside's rewriting a lot

of the rules of the war because his engineers do take

that sniper fire that you mentioned.

And so the artillery bombardment is an attempt

to try to drive them out.

First time in American history

that we're bombarding one of our own cities.

When the Union troops go across in those boats,

it's really the first riverine landing under fire.

In American history.

So like they're having to figure out how to do that.

Then there's urban combat on the 11th.

And the army has never trained for that.

There have been instances of urban combat before.

But really, this is the first time

these guys have ever had to do it.

So they're figuring that out as a go.

And so it really becomes this really improvisational

assault across the river and occupation of the town.

And then when Burnside gets the town, as you mentioned on the 12th,

there's like, he's not quite sure what to do next.

He was hoping that if he got across the river,

it was scarily out of his position.

And Lee doesn't move.

And so Burnside wastes the entire day on the 12th,

trying to figure out like, gosh, no, what?

And he is going to finally come up with a plan

and then poorly communicate that plan to his subordinates.

On December 13th, the Union assault begins.

And they have initial success.

But their lack of coordination,

certainly with the river there also makes it difficult.

How do the Confederates react to this attack?

Who's in charge of that?

So basically, Burnside's going to launch simultaneous attacks

against the north and south ends of the Confederate position,

hoping that one or the other is going to break through.

And as you mentioned, he does have success

on the south end of the field where George Gordon

Mead, who later will go on to win the battle of Gettysburg

when he finally gets promoted.

He's going to break through.

And he's facing a section of the Confederate line

that has just gotten into place.

Stonewall Jackson has moved into that area

to consolidate Lee's army.

And as Mead breaks through,

Stonewall Jackson's able to start piling reinforcements in.

It happens to be the spot of the line

where there are more Confederates per square foot

than anywhere else on the battlefield.

So it's a tough spot.

And Mead gets that breakthrough

and he can't get reinforcements.

And he desperately calls back for him.

His commander, a guy named John Reynolds,

is nowhere to be found.

Some guys from a different section of the army

refuse to march to his help without orders from their command.

So it really becomes this disorganized mess.

The man in charge of that whole section of the field

is a guy named William Franklin.

And Franklin takes a very hands-off approach to this.

He misinterprets those confusing orders

that come from Burnside.

Does not seek clarity.

Any general worth of assault

sees an opportunity here.

And Franklin instead really plays things

as conservatively as possible.

So that allows the Confederates to patch

that part of the lineup

and drive the Federals back off that field.

We really see the opposition of good leadership

versus bad at this point.

You've got the big names for the Confederates.

Stonewall Jackson, Long Street is there.

How do you compare them in terms of how they react to battle?

And I mean, is it simply that they are thinking

on their feet better than the Union

or the preparations better?

I think that absolutely both of those are true.

Lee really values independent thinking.

And he sort of tells his subordinates like,

here's kind of what I want to have happen.

And here's my intent.

And you sort of figure that out.

And then you take advantage of opportunities.

Lee's very aggressive.

And he rewards aggressive mindedness.

So I think that that's all really important.

And they do have a really strong defensive position.

So I think that preparation is very important.

Compared to the federal side,

where there's sort of this calcified way of doing things.

This army has its mindset.

There are protocols and ways to do it.

And that really works against leadership

for a long time during a war.

It's going to take a while for the dust to shake off there.

Long street is dug in, as you say, at the Sunken Road.

There's another horrible place called the slaughter pen.

Can you explain to me why these names?

So the slaughter pen farm is that area

in the south end of the field where meat breaks through

and then the countertacks happen.

And it just becomes a slaughter pen.

That's one of the descriptions that one of the soldiers

makes in writing about how awful that fighting was.

And the landscape looked like a slaughter pen.

The north end of the field where Long Street is

is a series of heights called Marie's Heights.

There is literally a Sunken Road

that runs along the front of some of those Heights.

There's a stone wall along that road.

So it's a great fortified position.

And so Long Street has a great topographical advantage

against the Federals that are attacking him there.

And he's able to beat off attacks,

seven waves of attacks throughout the day

on the 13th and sustain pretty minimal casualties in comparison.

Sunken Road doesn't sound like a great place to fight from, though.

Well, you know, it is a great place to fight from

so long as the Federals don't break through.

But as they discovered in Antietam

where the Confederates held a Sunken Road,

once the Federals did break through,

the Confederates were trapped like fish in a barrel.

And so that could be one of the disadvantages of this position.

But fortunately, there's a real strong artillery position

just behind and above them called Marie's Heights.

The Confederates have about 45 guns up there.

And the Confederate artillery commander tells Long Street

when I open them that field in front of me,

a chicken couldn't live out there.

And he pretty much proves it.

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and full of legendary figures whose names still resonate today.

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9,000 casualties as the Confederates counterattack

in the open field at slaughter pen.

I mean, 9,000 guys.

Over what period of time does this happen?

So the attacks were supposed to start at dawn.

They don't start until mid-morning,

goes back and forth till about three o'clock in the afternoon.

And those 9,000 casualties are pretty evenly split.

There's going to be about 5,000 federal casualties,

about 4,000 Confederate casualties.

So just those closeness and numbers show you

how intense and how close that fighting was.

Those are huge disparity at the north end of the field

when it comes to casualties, though,

which shows just how strong the Confederate position was up there.

You know, they're going to be about 9,000 federal casualties

up there, and only about 1,000 Confederate casualties are shown.

Side note, Chris, you work with the American Battlefield Trust

who are so kind to us on this podcast.

Preserving that battlefield was a very high priority

for them, wasn't it?

Absolutely.

For so long, the story of Fredericksburg really focused

around the sunken railroad and the accident

on the north end of the field.

But the real battle and kind of the hinge of the battle

was on the south end of the field at that slaughter pen farm.

It's the last major open attack plane

for the 1862 campaigns.

You get to see, as you've mentioned earlier,

that an Napoleonic movement troops sweeping across the plane.

And it was under development threat.

And so preserving that really not only helped then tell that story

and save that story,

but it also really reinterpreted the battle of Fredericksburg

in important ways.

So the purchase of that ground

had many, many significant ramifications.

Yeah, so interesting, so important.

December 15th,

Burnside has to retreat back across the Robohonic.

My goodness, after all the effort getting across,

back they go, this is the end of the 1862 campaign

in the Eastern theater, which is something to keep in mind.

In these days, back then, this is a seasonal thing.

They're going to close down for winter,

and we're going to pick back up in the early spring

with the whole Civil War.

That's how it was done in those days.

Not a great way to limp to the ending, is it?

It is not.

And when we consider that Lincoln really needed a battlefield victory

because the emancipation proclamation

is supposed to go into effect January 1st.

He needs a battlefield victory to enforce it,

and Burnside's not able to deliver.

And so really, that's going to settle in that front line of emancipation

right there at the Rappahannock River,

and the opportunities that might have existed

had Burnside been victorious and been able to open up more

of Virginia to emancipation.

It's one of those kind of sad tragedies of the war

when you think about it.

This victory at Fredericksburg,

which is resounding for the Confederates

boosts morale, reinvigorates that.

I mean, you can't only imagine coming out of the first full year

of the war, 1862.

Suddenly, things are going very, very well.

And we'll continue to go well, by the way,

when things start back up in the spring again,

it will go on to become the triumph of Chancellor

ville May 1863.

It's just remarkable.

I mean, it really is.

And I guess this emancipation proclamation

has something to do with this, has a lot to do with this.

How the Union found its mission at this time

when things had gone so badly through the fall of 1862

and into the spring of 1863?

Absolutely.

And you know, as Burnside is losing in Fredericksburg,

William T. Sherman then loses outside of Vicksburg

at a place called Chickasaw Bayou, right around Christmas.

And then there's a big army in central Tennessee,

the Army of the Comberland, that kind of pulls out a victory

by default because the Confederates

evacuate the battlefield right as 1862's turn into 1863

at the Battle of Stones River.

And Lincoln is so desperate for a victory

that he considers that brutal fight at Stones River

as being like, oh, that's what finally gives me

some sort of teeth to the emancipation proclamation.

He says the nation couldn't have survived without it.

But this is a really low point for the Federal's

and a really high point for the Confederacy.

Yeah, exactly.

Victory Fredericksburg, let's talk about the numbers

just so we know the Union of Army of Potomac,

12,500 casualties, Confederate Army half of that,

6,000 losses.

Six weeks after the battle, Lincoln removes

Burnside from command and appoints major general Joseph Hooker

as commander of the Army of Potomac.

But we're in that revolving door at this point, right?

These the Union cannot find its guy.

Yeah, and Burnside knew it and he knew he wasn't the guy.

He actually submits his resignation, which Lincoln takes.

It is important now that Lincoln doesn't fire Burnside

after Fredericksburg because there's plenty of blame to go around.

Franklin takes a lot for botching things in the South

into the field.

The engineers take a lot for not getting the pontoons there.

And it's just because morale among the officers is so low,

there's sort of a coup against Burnside.

He wants to clean office and he finally says,

look, I can't, this is too much.

Here's my resignation and Lincoln accepts it.

So then the door revolves and incomes hooker.

It's so much about timing with the Battle of Gettysburg.

And we haven't talked really enough about the election

being part of this.

I mean, it was really a delay factor for Lincoln.

He had to get past the midterms for this battle

to really take place.

And then he's supercharging Burnside

to a point of putting him at risk, right?

Absolutely.

Burnside realizes he's got no good options here.

He wants to settle into the winter encampment

and then hope that he'll have some better idea

or some better options in the spring.

And Lincoln's like, no, we have a few

emancipation proclamation coming.

Folks went to the polls and they want action.

Morales terrible.

You got to do something.

So Burnside knows he has bad choices

and Lincoln drives him into making

what might be the best of a bunch of bad choices

that's still a bad choice.

Chris, what's the big takeaway

from the Battle of Fredericksburg for you?

Well, a lot of people forget

this is the largest battle of the Civil War.

There are 201,000 men engaged.

So it makes it bigger than Gettysburg.

Even though Gettysburg takes place over three days

has more casualties.

So for me, Fredericksburg is often overlooked.

And as soon as you realize, gosh,

this is the biggest battle.

There are all sorts of those great little surprises.

If you take the time to study

one of these lesser known battles,

there's really, really a lot to explore

and discover than tell you a lot about leadership,

about logistics, about politics,

about the social side of things,

this takes place in a city itself.

So I encourage folks to spend some time

looking at this battle on their own

and seeing what discoveries they might make.

Specifically about logistics.

I mean, does the union just get better

at understanding the lay of the land

in the South as the Civil War goes on?

Because a lot of this tragedy would have been averted

if you'd just known better what the land looked like

and not get stuck with it.

You know, and what makes it even more inexcusable

is the federal army was here in the spring of 1962.

There were people in the army that knew the town, knew the area

and Burnside doesn't tap into that expertise.

Knowing the land doesn't get better

because, you know, particularly in 1864

as the army's advanced further,

they get into parts of Virginia

that they'd never been in before.

And so, you know, they have to discover as they go.

Still flying, blowing.

Chris McCalsky is the skilled historian you've been hearing

and he is a fellow with the American Battlefield Trust

and no wonder for that.

He is also a professor of journalism and communications

at St. Bonna Venture University

and author of books to numerous dimensions.

Chris, what's new in your career

and how can folks follow you?

Well, the best way to kind of tap into what we're up to

is go to emergingcivilwar.com.

There are more than 30 of us

that actually are participating in that.

It's a public history oriented digital platform

about the Civil War.

So you can find my information there

and find out what I'm up to.

List of my books, publications.

I've got a couple about Fredericksburg

and follow along free content every day

trying to help people stay connected with America's

defining event.

Emergingcivilwar.com.

I'm going there immediately.

See you later, Chris.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks for listening to American History Hit.

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