Battle of Fredericksburg

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The Battle of Fredericksburg, fought on December 13, 1862 between General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, is today remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the American Civil War.

The battle was the result of an effort by the Union Army to regain the initiative in its struggle against Lee's smaller but more aggressive army. Burnside was appointed commander of the Army of the Potomac in October in spite of the fact that his predecessor, Maj. Gen. George McClellan, had stopped Lee at the Battle of Antietam in September. Much of the reason for this was a result of McClellan's lack of decisiveness and the excessive amount of time he required to continually reorganize and re-equip his army following major battles.

Burnside, in response to requests and proddings from President Abraham Lincoln and general in chief Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, planned a late fall offensive in which he hoped to cross the Rappahannock River, seize the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and then move southward along the roads to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. This plan was spoiled due to issues with the delivery of the pontoon bridges, even though crossable fords had been located both upstream and downstream. By the time the pontoons were laid, Lee was dug in south and west of Fredericksburg with a force of 72,564 men.

Nevertheless, Burnside went ahead with the crossing and elected to fight Lee anyway, despite objections from at least two of his general staff. He counted on the numerical strength of his army, which numbered 117,000 effectives, to drive Lee out of his defensive positions and force him to retreat toward Richmond. In addition to his numerical advantage in troop strength, Burnside also had the advantage of knowing his army could not be attacked effectively. On the other side of the Rappahannock, 300 artillery pieces had been located on a ridge known as Stafford Heights to prevent Lee's army from mounting any major counterattacks.

Lee had great faith in his army, even though he was fairly uncertain of the plans of the opposing commander as late as two days before the Union Army attempted a crossing. He deployed approximately 20,000 men on his left flank, which was anchored on the ridge known as Marye's Heights, just to the west of the city, behind a stone wall at the crest of the ridge. Fearing a crossing downstream, south of the city, he deployed the rest of his men to the south, also interspersed with hills which made for an excellent defensive position. He assigned Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, his best subordinate for defensive operations, to handle the left flank with his First Corps. On the right, where there was some chance of counterattacking if the opportunity presented itself, Lee posted the fiery Lieut. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and his smaller, but more offensive-minded Second Corps, which had performed with great valor in recent actions in the Shenandoah Campaign.

With the bridges in place, the Union forces crossed the Rappahannock on December 11 in the face of Confederate sharpshooters who had taken up positions inside abandoned buildings within the city and were picking off engineers in the morning fog. Attempting to drive the sharpshooters out, Union artillery bombardments destroyed many of the buildings without much effect. The workable solution was to send small teams of infantry across in boats. After the five bridges were in place, Burnside's men looted the city of with a fury that enraged Lee, who compared their depredations with those of the ancient Vandals. The destruction also enraged Lee's men, many of whom were native Virginians. Over the course of that day and the next, Burnside's men deployed outside the city and prepared to attack Lee's army.

The battle opened on the morning of December 13, when the Union left wing commander Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin sent two divisions into a previously unseen gap in Jackson's defenses on the right. Jackson quickly responded with a withering counterattack that inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers, and dissuaded Burnside from any more attacks on the Confederate right. Instead, he decided to attempt to break the left.

For the next several hours, Burnside ordered division after division of his army to assault Marye's Heights. Each division was mowed down by Longstreet's defenders as it attempted to cross the open ground in front of Marye's Heights. Seven Union divisions were sent in, generally one brigade at a time, for a total of fourteen individual charges, all of which failed, costing the divisions over 9,000 casualties. Confederate losses at Marye's Heights totaled around 1,500. The falling of darkness and the entreaties of Burnside's subordinates were enough to put an end to the attacks. Thousands of Union soldiers spent the cold December night on the fields leading to the Heights, unable to move or assist the wounded due to Confederate fire.

The armies remained in position throughout the day on December 14, when Burnside briefly considered leading his old IX Corps in one final attack on Marye's Heights, but reconsidered. That afternoon, Burnside asked Lee for a truce to attend to his wounded, which Lee graciously granted. The next day the Federal forces retreated across the river and the campaign came to an end.

The casualties sustained by each army showed clearly how disastrous the Union army's tactics were, and Burnside was relieved of command a month later (following the humiliating failure of his "Mud March"). The Union army lost over 13,000 men, with more than 10,000 of them coming as a result of the repeated attacks on Marye's Heights. The Confederate army lost about 4,500, most of them in the early fighting on Jackson's front. Longstreet's corps lost only about 500 men.

Portions of the Fredericksburg battlefield are now preserved as part of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, administered by the National Park Service.de:Schlacht von Fredericksburg