 | VI.
FREDERICKSBURG. Hammer and rapier |  |
6. VI.
FREDERICKSBURG.
In December, 1862, the Army of Northern Virginia
was holding the heights south of Fredericksburg.
At three o'clock in the morning, on the 11th of that
month, the troops were waked from slumber by a single
gun, which sent its warning voice across the
gloom.
Then this first discharge was followed by another,
and the men sprung to arms; the camps buzzed; line
of battle was formed—all along the crest, from
Marye's Hill down to Hamilton's Crossing, the army
stood ready.
The moment had come; for those two cannon,
suddenly thundering in the cold night-watches, were
signal guns. Through their bronze mouths, Lee said
to his men:
“Get ready! The enemy are crossing!”
Soon, from the direction of Fredericksburg, came
the quick rattle of musketry. Something of interest
was evidently going on there. Gen. Lee was soon in
the saddle, and couriers, passing at a swift gallop, like
phantoms through the darkness, brought him intelligence
from the front.
In fact, Gen. Burnside was making, at last, his great
of the Rappahannock. Knowing well the mettle of
his great opponent, Lee—honestly distrusting his ability
to command so large an army[1] —utterly opposed
to a decisive trial of strength at this time and place—
Burnside had yet been pushed forward by his Government;
ordered to strike; and on the morning of this
day of December, 1862, he was obeying.
All the night of the 10th, pontoons were being hauled
down to the stream, at Fredericksburg and below; at
three o'clock in the morning, as we have seen, the signal
guns of Lee announced that the boats were being
lashed together to cross over the army.
At the town, took place the main effort to impede
the movement. The river street was lined with Barksdale's
Mississippians, and no sooner had they heard
the rattle of timbers and the hum of busy workmen,
through the dense fog on the stream, than every man
was on the alert. The Federal pontoneers worked
like beavers in the gloom, knowing the peril they were
exposed to—and soon their expectations were realized.
A sudden storm of bullets hissed through the mist; the
foremost workmen fell dead or mortally wounded, and
the rest recoiled before the unseen enemy.
Time after time the effort was renewed, but always
the fire of the Mississippians drove back the boat-builders.
One, two, three, four, five, six hours passed
with no better success—when, in a rage, doubtless, at
this ill-fortune, Gen. Burnside, at ten o'clock, opened
of artillery.
Then, as though driven from the field by this tremendous
cannonade, the fog rose, drifted off, and disappeared.
From an eminence, jutting out from the
crest of hills on which his army was drawn up, Gen.
Lee looked in silence at the curious and tragic spectacle.
On the hills beyond the river were seen long rows of
Federal cannon, grim and sullen, or spouting smoke
and flame. Every instant came the quick, red glare,
the bellowing roar, and the burst of shell above the
devoted town.
Fredericksburg was being bombarded—racked right
and left with a cross-fire of shot and shell. This hurricane
of death swept through the streets, incessant, remorseless,
never relaxing in its fury. Houses crashed
down; the church steeples shook and tottered, as shot
tore them; women and children ran for life, pursued
by bursting shell; flames rose, and a great cloud of lurid
smoke drifted away, mingling itself with the snowy
cannon smoke on the Stafford hills.
When, at noon, the cannonade ceased, the town was
on fire in many places, and long after night the red
flames of burning mansions contended with the darkness,
rendering wilder and more weird the sombre
scene of destruction. At intervals only, a single gun
roared sullenly from the northern hills, like a wild
beast growling over his prey.
Soon after the beginning of the cannonade, another
attempt was made to throw the pontoons over, but it
failed again. Barksdale had not retreated; amid crashing
stood—and every effort of the Federal troops to lay
their bridges was defeated. It was only in the afternoon
that a brave officer of the Northern army threw
across three regiments in barges. These advanced;
assailed Barksdale furiously; drove him from the
place; then the pontoon bridge was rapidly laid, and
the head of Burnside's column was at once thrown
over.
The cruel bombardment did not effect that—it
effected absolutely nothing. It was the three regiments
in barges, which a third lieutenant, without a
beard on his face, would have sent across twelve hours
before.
Lee, wrapped in his old gray riding cape, looked on,
as we have said, from the spot now called “Lee's Hill,”
near the telegraph road, and beside him stood Longstreet,
stout, heavily bearded, and calm, like his commander.
It was hard to realize, looking at these unmoved
faces, that the Virginian and the Carolinian were
witnessing the destruction of one of the oldest and most
hospitable of Virginian cities.
If any one doubts the extent of that destruction, let
him go thither, as the present writer did, the other day,
and look at the long rows of ruins, the ghost-like chimneys,
the blackened walls, and the river facade of the
houses riddled with cannon balls. In one small house
I counted fifty. And the fact is not surprising. In
two hours, Gen. Burnside had fired seven thousand
three hundred and fifty rounds upon the town.
So, on that night of December the 11th, Fredericksburg
was torn to pieces—the shattered church spires
from the “Chatham” hill bellowed sombre and triumphant
over all.
Throughout the night, and all day on the 12th, Gen.
Burnside was crossing. It was a very striking spectaele,
viewed from the summit of Lee's Hill—where
Gen. Lee, as before, stood, looking on in silence. Opposite
the pontoon bridge were seen the heavy and
dark masses of the Federal infantry, about to cross.
The great columns undulated as they moved down
from the hills, like gigantic serpents, with glittering
bayonets and gun-barrels for scales. Above them banners
waved—through the clear December air came
the notes of the drum and bugle; you could even hear
the rumble of the artillery—those bronze war-dogs, in
whose mouths the thunder slumbered. All day, as we
have said, the Federal forces were crossing, with little
opposition.
On the night of the 12th, the army was over, and it
was evident that on the next day Gen. Bnrnside would
deliver battle, by advancing to storm the position occupied
by Lee.
What was that position, and what the character of
the ground upon which was fought this bloody action?
Let us look at it. Battles are mazes, without some
knowledge of the localities. Let us take our stand on
the eminence called Lee's Hill, which juts out from
the crest, commanding a full view of all. Beneath us
stretches a plain extending to the Rappahannock. Beyond
the plain the roofs and spires of Fredericksburg
are seen, not a mile away. On the northern shores of
the river, rise lofty hills, crowned with white mansions.
they indicate the head-quarters of some Federal general.
Along the hills dusky objects dot the crest—they are
cannon. Through the gorges you see dark and motionless
masses—they are Federal infantry, waiting for the
order to advance.
That officer on horseback yonder, slowly pacing
along the hills, is perhaps Gen. Burnside, reconnoitering.
Those specks upon the river banks are pickets.
Behind the hill yonder, something stands which you
cannot make out—it is a pontoon train ready to move.
Let us look now at the southern shore. To the right
and left of us stretches the wooded crest upon which
Gen. Lee has drawn up his line of battle. On the left,
extending from his centre to the river above, is Longstreet's
line, embattled, ready, and bristling yonder on
the summit of Marye's Hill, with grim-looking cannon.
There the Irish brigade is going to charge with magnificent
élan, and strew the fatal field in front of that
stone wall, at the foot of the hill, with their bodies.
On the right is Jackson, holding the wooded crest to
the point at Hamilton's Crossing, where it sinks into
the plain. At every opening in his line you see the
muzzles of cannon; on the hill above the crossing,
which the men are going to call “Dead Horse Hill,”
he has massed his batteries, to rake the field before
him when the enemy rush forward there, as it is evident
they will. Still further, on the right, in the great
plain reaching to the Massaponnax, Stuart is visible
with his guns—not with his cavalry. He has reconnoitered
the whole ground; found the fields intersected
by deep ditches, with long rows of cedars lining them,
are drawn up in the woods, on the flank—
Stuart is going to mass thirty pieces of artillery in that
field, and open a furious fire on the Federal left as they
charge the slopes of “Dead Horse Hill.”
Thus the Confederate position is powerful enough,
giving many advantages. But the enemy have some,
too. On the banks of the river yonder are steep bluffs,
under which they can find shelter from the shot and
shell; in the numerous ditches, lined with cedars, they
will have the best possible rifle-pits from which to fire
upon the cannoneers of Stuart. If the Southern lines
advance too far into the plain the dusky objects youder,
on the heights across the river, which are “thirty-pound
Parrotts,” will sweep the whole field, tearing
men, horses, and guns to pieces with their iron thunderbolts.
As long, however, as Lee holds his position upon the
heights, there can be small doubt of the result, Humanly
speaking, he cannot be driven from the ground.
His fifty thousand muskets can hold it forever. Thrice
Burnside's force can make no impression, and the proof
is that one-third of Lee's is going to repulse him without
difficulty.
The situation must have looked ugly to the Federal
commander, but he did not seem to realize its full significance.
He must have seen that to advance across
that fatal plain would cost him rivers of blood; that
Lee's position here was twice as strong as that at Sharpsburg,
and his army twice as numerous as then—and yet,
in spite of all, in the very teeth of fate, Gen. Burnside
seemed determined to risk all; to advance across that
with bayonets and cannon. How to attack and
fight a successful battle there would have puzzled
Napoleon. It is difficult to say what that great master
of the art of war would have done upon the occasion;
but it may be declared with absolute certainty that he
would not have done what Gen. Burnside did. Somewhere—either
on the right or the left—the Emperor
would have massed his battalions, and launched half
his force at Lee, with the fury of an avalanche which
bursts through every obstacle. Instead of adopting
this, the only plan which promised success, Gen. Burnside
ordered assaults to be made on the right and left
with single divisions. These two divisions it was
hoped, would be able to break through the veteran
corps of Longstreet and Jackson!
Does any reader say that this statement is absurd?
The truth is of record. In that great “open sesame”
to all hidden things, “The Report on the Conduct of
the War,” the facts are recorded. Gen. Burnside
himself convicts himself of fatal ignorance of the
ground—of a terrible misapprehension of the obstacles
in his path.
The proof is given.
“The enemy,” said Gen. Burnside,[2]
“had cut a
road along in the rear of the line of heights where we
made our attack.... I obtained from a colored
man, from the other side of the town, information
in regard to this new road which proved to be correct.
I wanted to obtain possession of that new road, and
left.... Then I purposed to make a direct
attack on their front, and drive them out of their
works.”
That is to say, that the little “Mine Road” running
in rear of Gen. Lee's right wing, presented itself to
General Burnside's imagination, after talking with the
“colored man,” as a great military highway, cut by
his opponent, connecting his wings, and constituting
the key of his position. To gain possession of that
mere bridle path appeared to him a matter of the first
importance, and a division was sent to drive Jackson
from in front of it!
Proof—the order of Gen. Burnside, December 13,
5.55 a. m., to General Franklin, on his left.[3]
“Send
out at once a division at least.. to seize, if possible,
the heights near Captain Hamilton's.”
Fatal Order No. 1!—The “heights near Captain
Hamilton's” were the hills upon which Jackson was
drawn up with his triple line of bayonets, and his artillery
waiting to do the terrible work it did do.
In the same manner Lee's left, at Marye's Hill, was
to be assailed, and driven back—by a division.
Proof—the same order, announcing Burnside's directions
to Gen. Sumner on his right. “He (Burnside)
has ordered another column, of a division or
more, to be moved from Gen. Sumner's command
up the Plank Road to its intersection with the Telegraph
Road, where they will divide, with the object
of seizing the heights on both of those roads.”
Fatal Order No. 2!—The “Plank Road” led straight
into the muzzles of Longstreet's cannon, on Marye's
Hill—“the heights” in question. The point of “intersection
with the Telegraph Road” was the locality
of that sombre, fatal, terrible stone wall, lined with
Southern marksmen, in front of which the divisions of
French, Hancock, and Humphreys, charged so splendidly,
and were torn to pieces by the concentrated fire
of small arms and artillery hurled upon them within
point blank range, as they uselessly rushed to their
death.
“Holding these heights, with the heights near Captain
Hamilton's,” adds General Burnside's order, “will,
I hope, compel the enemy to evacuate the whole ridge
between these points.” If not, then, as he says in his
testimony, “I proposed to make a direct attack on
their front, and drive them out of their works.”
Such was the programme of operations adopted by
Gen. Burnside. It cannot be said to be mis-stated,
for it is given on the authority of his general order,
and his own testimony. He proposed to assault the
two powerful positions at Marye's Hill and Hamilton's
Crossing, with a division at a time, and it will be seen
that it was done. Gen. Meade, commanding the assaulting
force at Hamilton's, says he had in all only
ten thousand men engaged. In reserve, looking on,
were the forty-five or fifty thousand men of Franklin.
[4]
From the moment when Gen. Sumner, commanding
Gen. Franklin, commanding the two corps of the
Left Grand Division, received that order to attack in
driblets, they must have felt that all was over. This
Gibraltar was going to be pelted with popguns, when
a battering ram, and a heavy one, was needed. Why
this frightful blunder? The explanation is not difficult.
Gen. Burnside had estimated his own powers
with singular justice. What his government regarded
as unfounded self-depreciation was really modest, good
sense. He was painfully unequal to the arduous work
which the authorities had thrust upon him. He did
his best, but that best was bad indeed. The annals of
war contain no blunder greater than that attack at
Fredericksburg.
But it is time to terminate this tedious preface—
tedious, but necessary. For the rest, it diminishes the
lustre of the Southern triumph—this exposition of the
military deficiencies of the Federal commander. The
troops did their part, and did it well. They fought
with admirable dash and courage, until they found
what a cul-de-sac they had been thrust into; then they
sullenly refused to charge again, tired of a farce so
bloody.
But it was not a farce; it was a tragedy. Of that
the reader shall judge.
At midnight of the 12th December, this, then, was
the position of the adversaries. Lee was on the wooded
heights with Longstreet commanding his left, Jackson
his right—waiting. Burnside was on the plain upon
the river's bank, and in the town—Sumner commanding
his right, Franklin his left, Hooker his centre, in
in the woods of the west no sound came. From the
blue multitude rose a hum, a buzz, a murmur, harsh
and threatening. Arms clashed, horses neighed, artillery
rumbled—above all rang, from time to time,
the metallic vibrations of the bugle.
The force of Burnside was somewhat more than
one hundred thousand muskets.[5]
Lee numbered about
fifty thousand bayonets in all. The odds were thus
two to one about.
Of the morale of the Northern army, the present
writer knows nothing. The ragged veterans of Lee
were joyful. Never had the old army of Northern
Virginia been in better trim for an obstinate, dashing
fight. The troops were all bone and muscle—
every eye laughed—victory seemed to hover in the
air above them, and salute them in advance. All
day they had laughed and jested; they were now at
midnight sleeping on their arms, awaiting, without
care, that dawn which would unchain the thunder.
At the first dim intimation of the coming day,
seen through the fog which wrapped all the landscape,
the woods began to buzz. Every man clutched
his gun. Then cheers were heard resounding in the
underwood along the slope near Hamilon's Crossing.
Lee was passing in front of the lines accompanied
by Jackson and Stuart.
These three men were, par excellence, the viri illustroe
figures will live forever on canvas, in marble, and
cut deep in human hearts—Johnston, Beauregard,
Longstreet, Hill, Hood, and a hundred more. But
those three rose tallest and most distinct from the
smoke of the Virginia battles—Lee, Jackson, and
Stuart. They owed that prominence not only to
their soldiership, but to the personal and mental individuality
which characterized them.
Look at them for a moment, as they ride along
the lines, and you will see that they are types.
Lee is the model cavalier of the great Anglo-Norman
race. His figure is tall and erect; his seat in
the saddle perfect. His uniform is plain but neat;
his equipment beyond criticism. Stately, thorough-bred,
graceful in every movement, there is something
in his glance, in the very carriage of his person,
that is illustrious and imposing. He has the
army-leader look. There is not the remotest particle
of ostentation, much less of arrogance, in his
bearing. This man was a gentleman, you can see,
before he was a soldier.
Jackson's is a figure altogether different. He has
cast aside to-day, by mere accident, his old dingy uniform,
to put on a fine dress-coat, which Stuart has
given him—an overcoat of quite surpassing elegance
—and a new cap, which dazzles the eye with its braid.
But he cannot hide the individuality of “Stonewall
Jackson.” His seat in the saddle is ungraceful; he
rides with his knees drawn up; his chin is in the air,
and he looks out from beneath his fine new cap as he
did from beneath his old dingy one, thrown aside. It
shy and absent-minded student, drawn forth from the
pious meditations of his study by the bruit of war, and
listening with a sort of bewildered glance to all this
clash of arms. Awkward, unimposing, silent, there is
in this figure not the least hint of the man of Port
Republic, Cold Harbour, and Sharpsburg—never has
the flawless diamond of supreme military genius presented
itself to men so thoroughly “in the rough,” un-cut
and unburnished. To know its quality, you must
strike against it. Not the heaviest sledge-hammer of
war can splinter it.
Last of the illustrious trio is Stuart, the ideal cavalry
commander of all imagination—young, laughing, joyous,
superb, with rattling sabre, brilliant sash, floating
plume—devoted, fearless, ever hoping; and ready day
or night, in sunshine or in storm, to carry out the plans
of Lee—to fight with infantry, artillery, or cavalry,
and conquer, or “die trying.” In his dazzling glance
you read the character of this man, who laughs at
peril and dares it to do its worst—the incarnation, in
the new Revolution, of the dead Rupert of England.
In 1864, Lee was maimed, indeed. At Chancellorsville
he had lost his right arm. At Yellow Tavern he
had lost his left.
The cheers rose, rung in the woods, and accompanied
the three commanders as they rode on to the right,
along the railroad, to the old Richmond stage road.
This led straight toward the river, striking the river
road running parallel with the stream, near the Federal
left.
Franklin was already moving. Stuart conducted
enemy, and pointed out the dusky figures in the fog:
they were Federal sharpshooters. As the group sat
their horses, motionless, the depths of the fog began
to stir. Black specks advanced on the humid field,
and bullets whistled. Then the dark lines of the enemy
were seen as they slowly and steadily advanced.
Stuart called to Pelham, his chief of artillery, and
gave him an order. Pelham disappeared at a gallop;
soon the roll of artillery was heard: a Napoleon gun
advanced at a rapid gallop through the fog; and Pelham
opened fire from the intersection of the roads upon
the enemy's left as they came on.
“Meade advanced across the plain,” says a Federal
writer,[6]
“but had not proceeded far before he was
compelled to stop and silence a battery that Stuart had
posted on the Port Royal road, and which had a flank
fire on his left.
This battery was one Napoleon—captured at Seven
Pines, and used so well at Cold Harbour. Pelham's
fire was so rapid and incessant that it checked Meade's
whole division. Five thousand men halted until that
hornet could be brushed away.
To silence the galling fire, General Meade brought
up two or three batteries, posted them in Pelham's
front, at point blank range, and opened on him a furious
fire of shot and shell, to which was added the cross
fire of some thirty-pound Parrotts on the hills beyond
the river. The storm of projectiles thus hurled at the
one Napoleon was enough to move the nerve of a veteran.
a “beardless boy.” He continued the fire, in the
midst of dead and dying men of the gun detachment,
and staid until his last round had been fired, and a
peremptory order came for him to move.
Lee had witnessed the hard combat from the hill
above.
“It is glorious to see such courage in one so
young!” he exclaimed; and in his brief report of
the battle, he spoke of the young man as the “gallant
Pelham,” knighting him thus upon the field.
This minute mention of a simple accident will be
pardoned in the writer of these lines. Pelham was
his friend, and is dead—if heroes ever die.
Stuart tried to support Pelham with another gun,
but it was smashed to pieces; then Gen. Meade rushed
forward. It was nine or ten o'clock; the fog had
lifted; the plain was all alive with serried lines of infantry;
and with the thunder of artillery, the rattle of
small arms, and the cheers of onset, the Federal forces
dashed up headlong to the wooded slope where Jackson
waited, grim and silent, to receive their attack.
They had come within a few hundred yards; the
Confederate skirmishers ran in, as though a wind had
swept them back; Meade gallantly rushed on, when suddenly
from the crest a volcano flamed. It was Jackson's
artillery, held in leash until then. Now, all at once, it
opened. The crest spouted smoke and flame; a detonation
tore the air, and the Federal lines gave back,
with huge gaps in them, made by the frightful fire of
shell and cannister. In spite of this bloody reception,
however, the ranks were quickly reformed; the lines
artillery upon the crest roared on, doing bloody work,
the men rushed headlong at the heights.
There a stubborn, bitter, desperate combat took
place—the Confederates not moving. But a fatal accident
came suddenly to the enemy's assistance. Hill
had left a gap between two of his brigades—the Federal
forces pierced it—the line fell back; in a few moments
Jackson's first line was driven, and the Federal
troops rushed up, and gained the crest.
That charge was as gallant as any in the war, and
it deserved to be supported. The support did not
come. Five thousand men had dashed into the lion's
mouth—the teeth were about to close upon them—
fifty thousand in the plain beneath were looking on as
mere spectators of this grapple of life and death.
Gen. Burnside's order had been carried out. Franklin
had sent the “division” to “seize the heights near Capt.
Hamilton's;” they had been seized by that brave rush,
and that was all. In thirty minutes Meade's division
was driven from the hill—the earth was littered with
his dead—the survivors were flying down the slope,
pursued by merciless volleys, leaving blood upon every
dry leaf, dead bodies in every ravine.
Gregg's brigade had met them on the crest, as they
rushed up—had checked them without difficulty—
there never had been any hope for them. That was
only Jackson's second line; his third did not take the
trouble to move.
Meade had lost forty men out of every hundred;
the rest were flying, and carrying dismay into the
ranks of their comrades.
Both armies saw this repulse—terrible, bloody,
mortal. From a hill, near the centre of his line, Gen.
Lee looked on with a glow in his cheeks, and a martial
light in the clear, commanding eyes, which had witnessed
in their time so many scenes of carnage. As
Gen. Meade's lines were now seen flying, pursued by
Jackson's men, Lee gazed at them in silence; then, in
that deep voice, which never lost its grave and measured
accent, he murmured:
“It is well this is so terrible; we would grow too
fond of it!”
So terminated the assault upon Jackson. The fatal
charge upon Longstreet, holding Marye's Hill, was
now to follow.
The ground has been briefly referred to; let us
look at it again. Marye's Hill is west of Fredericksburg,
about half a mile distant. Over its
abrupt crest runs the Plank Road to Chancellorsville.
At its foot comes in from the South the Telegraph
Road, skirted here by a low stone wall; and in front
of this wall is an open field, and a small stream. The
point of “intersection of the Plank Road with the
Telegraph Road” was, by Gen. Burnside's order, to be
the point of attack for Sumner. Now, this point was
the stone wall bristling with infantry, within two hundred
yards of the heights crowned with artillery.
Above the wall rose a hedge of bayonets; on the hill
grinned the bronze mouths of Longstreet's cannon.
To charge that position was desperation or madness.
And it was charged.
No sooner had the thunders of the assault upon Jackson
Longstreet—sudden, frightful, horrible beyond words.
There are events of the war which the historian
shrinks from with a sort of a shudder. The odour of
death arises from them; they smell of the charnel.
That assault upon Marye's Heights was one of those
terrible episodes, and God forbid that the present
writer should take satisfaction in painting the bloody
picture. It was a revel of death that the sun witnessed
that day—the spectacle of men rushing madly against
musketry and cannon, which hurled them back, and
tore them to pieces at every step. Sumner obeyed his
fatal order, and charged in column of brigades, and in
ten minutes they were nearly annihilated. He charged
again with mad courage—for this officer had the blood
of the soldier—and was met as before. Not a man
reached that fatal, terrible wall. From its summit the
long volleys struck the troops in the face, and from the
heights above round shot and shell finished the bloody
work. When that thunder had ceased, what the eye
saw was a great field covered at every step with
corpses; within twenty-five yards of the wall, the
bravest had thrown up their hands, and lay dead in
that attitude.
The assault upon Longstreet had been repulsed like
the assault on Jackson.
Then the madness of despair is said to have seized
upon Gen. Burnside. He had not witnessed the battle,
remaining at his head-quarters, the “Phillips House,”
a mile or more from the river; but he now mounted his
horse, rode down to the banks, dismounted, walked
heights, which Sumner had just charged, exclaimed:
“That crest must be carried to-night!”
Hooker had been held in reserve on the north bank.
He was now ordered to cross and attack. He rode
over, looked at the ground, returned at full gallop to
Gen. Burnside, and remonstrated.
He was right then; he was not right afterwards in
“making out a case,” and as strong a one as possible,
against his commander. Gen. Hooker enjoys the disagreeable
reputation of having always sought to strike
the fallen—to administer the coup de grace to his
unfortunate comrades when they were staggering under
“official” displeasure. Ferocious against McClellan,
after his failure at Cold Harbour, he was savage
upon Burnside when defeat had overshadowed him at
Fredericksburg. Marye's Hill was an ugly obstacle—
Gen. Hooker made it hideous. The stone wall was a
barrier. General Hooker made a fortress of it.
Marye's Hill, he says, was “a mountain of rock.” It
was only an ordinary eminence, with artillery to defend
it.
The stone wall was “five or six hundred yards” long,
with “rifle-pits all along”—“not simply a stone wall,
but a support wall,” with “earth between the rifle-pits
and the wall;” “to batter down that wall was like
battering down the masonry of a fortification;” and
“thirty thousand men were massed behind this wall!”
So says Gen. Hooker. Let the reader some day get
out of the cars at Fredericksburg, and go and look at
this terrible “fortification.” It is a poor little ordinary
Virginia stone fence, about eighteen inches thick. It
by the fires kindled on that cold December day
of 1862.
The “thirty thousand men,” too, were the product
of Gen. Hooker's imagination. The force which held
that wall was Cobb's brigade, to which were added,
during the action, Kershaw's brigade, and two regiments
of Gen. Cooke's—in all, seventeen hundred
men. It was this force simply,[7]
not thirty thousand
men, which was “massed behind that wall of five or
six hundred yards.”
The animus of Gen. Hooker is all in one sentence of
his report: “Finding that I had lost as many men as
my orders required me to lose, I suspended the attack.”
Unhappy Gen. Burnside! you were struck while down
by your remorseless lieutenant, who was burning to
show his superior military genius—at Chancellorsville!
Receiving the order to attack again the fatal heights,
Hooker remonstrated, as has been seen, declaring, with
justice, that the attack was desperate. Gen. Burnside
insisted—a vertigo appeared to have seized upon him.
Hooker obeyed, sullenly marshalled his troops, and
prepared for the assault, by opening with his artillery
upon the dangerous stone wall. His object, he says,
was to make “a hole” in it for the entrance of the assaulting
column; and the statement is so curious that
it can only be explained upon the theory that Gen.
Hooker never saw the wall of which he spoke.
The artillery fire continued until nearly sunset, when
everything was ready for the second assault. The men
unloaded. It was necessary for them to depend entirely
upon the bayonet, “for there was no time there
to load and fire,” says Gen. Hooker. The column of
assault was thus formed, the word was given, and the
troops dashed forward with hurrahs to storm the wall
and the heights.
A few words only are necessary to convey the result.
From the wall and the hill came the merciless fusillade
once more; the dark masses staggered, then gave way,
then retreated swiftly, leaving the ground encumbered
with their dead. The charge had lasted “fifteen minutes;”
and of four thousand men who went forward to
the assault, the bodies of seventeen hundred and sixty
were left upon the field.
As Hooker fell back, a threatening roar came from
the Confederate right, near Hamilton's crossing; and
that sound announced the inception of one of the most
daring enterprises ever conceived by the master mind
of Jackson. To this let us now give a few words.
Repulsing Meade without difficulty in the morning,
Jackson had remained in position upon his wooded
crest, waiting all day for a second attack. As the
hours passed on, and the enemy only used their artillery,
it became obvious that no further assault upon
him would be made that day; and that could only
result from the fact that their troops were demoralized.
What to do? That question never puzzled Jackson
long. With the intuition of genius, he understood the
whole truth. On the left as on the right—at Marye's
as at Hamilton's—the enemy were repulsed and staggering.
at the point of the bayonet.
Those who saw Jackson then will never forget his
face. His eyes glared, his cheeks glowed, his lips were
shut like a vice. In the hurried movements of the
man, ordinarily so calm, and in the strident accents of
his voice, no less than in his face, could be read the
secret of an immense excitement and a fixed and unalterable
resolution.
The present writer saw him, and wondered at that
unwonted emotion, knowing not what was coming.
Near the crossing, one of his staff, well known to me,
came at a gallop.
“Are you going to Gen. Stuart?” he said, hurriedly.
“Yes.”
“Well, tell him that Gen. Jackson is going to advance
and attack the enemy precisely at sunset—he
wishes Gen. Stuart to advance his artillery and fire as
rapidly as possible, taking care not to injure the troops
as they attack.”
A glance over the shoulder showed that no time was
to be lost. The sun was poised like a red-hot shield
upon the Massaponnax woods. In ten minutes Gen.
Stuart had Jackson's order.
“Good!” he exclaimed, and in a few moments his
guns began to advance, firing furiously at every pause.
Thirty peices under Pelham made the great field a
sheet of flame in the dusk, and step by step Stuart
threw forward his artillery, in face of a destructive
fire, until he was near the Port Royal wood, from
which Meade had advanced in the morning. But no
sound came from Jackson. Stuart was roaring on still,
the news.
“Tell the General I have advanced,” he said, “but
Jackson has not, and that I am going on crowding 'em
with artillery.”
As night fell he was right upon the enemy's masses
—where was Jackson, and why had he not advanced?
That question remains unanswered. Jackson said because
the enemy began to fire upon him when he
moved, with all their batteries. The army said because
an order miscarried; a general lagged; an hour
was lost. One thing only is certain—that that
grand assault was never made.
What result would have followed it? That is a
difficult question; and it is hazardous in military affairs
to speculate upon events which never took place.
“From what I knew,” says Gen. Franklin, “of our
want of success upon the right, and the demoralized
condition of the troops upon the right and centre, as
represented to me by their commanders, I confess that
I believe the order to recross was a very proper one.”
Jackson is said to have adhered to his attack with
the bayonet: to have urged, in council of war, that the
Confederates should strip naked to the waist, make a
night assault, and “drive them into the river.” He
alone seems to have felt, as by intuition, that the
morale of the Federal army was broken.
And yet Gen. Burnside resolved upon another attempt.
Crushed in all but his courage, he ordered the
Ninth Corps to be marshaled in column of regiments
for an assault on Marye's Hill, led by himself in person,
and it was only when his corps commanders besought
yielded.
But the army was not withdrawn. All day Sunday
and Monday—two whole days after the battle—the
troops remained drawn up in the great plain, under
the muzzles of Gen. Lee's guns. The indecision of the
Federal commander resembled resolution. He seemed
determined to attack again. The bands played, the
banners rippled, the bugles sounded, the lines were
marshaled; then, on Tuesday morning, after a drenching
storm in the night, the multitude had disappeared
like the phantasmagoria of a dream.
Burnside had recrossed the river, and the campaign
had ended.
A town in ruins and still smoking; walls torn with
cannon balls; houses near the stone fence—you can
see them still—riddled like sieves with musket bullets;
dead bodies every where; new-made graves on every
side; broken artillery carriages; abandoned flags;
women without shelter; children without food; dirt,
desolation, blood, and mourning—that was what remained
when the Federal army left the south bank of
the Rappahannock.
Gen. Burnside had fought one of the bloodiest and
most useless battles of history.
“I told them that I was not competent to command such a large
army as this. I had said the same over and over again to the President
and Secretary of War.”—Burnside in Conduct of War, 1, 650.
See the testimony of Gen. Meade. Franklin's force, in all, he
says, was “fifty-five or sixty thousand men.”
| VI.
FREDERICKSBURG. Hammer and rapier | |