CHAPTER XIII. THE BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG. From December 10th to December 17th, 1862. THE REBELS ON THE RAPPAHANNOCK.-PURSUED BY THE PATRIOTS.-GENERAL BURNSIDE IN GENERAL LEE's object in crossing to the north side of the Potomac was to hold and occupy Maryland. In this he utterly failed. Great indignation was expressed, in the North, that he had been allowed to retire with his shattered army unmolested. As the rebel army retreated into Virginia, the patriot troops slowly followed, taking the route east of the Blue Ridge. General Lee took his position and strongly fortified himself on the southern banks of the Rappahannock. The dissatisfaction with General McClellan was so great, that, on the 5th of November, by direction of the President of the United States, he was relieved from the command of the Army of the Potomac, and General Burnside was ordered to succeed him. The new general made immediate preparations for the prosecution of the war with increased vigor. The heroic but unsuccessful attack upon the foe within their intrenchments, on the heights in the rear of Fredericksburg, was the result. Fredericksburg was once the most important town in Spottsylvania County, Virginia. It is situated on the southern bank of the Rappahannock, at the head of tide-water. It is about sixty miles north of Richmond, and is connected with it both by rail and by a turnpike road. Turnpikes branch from it in numerous directions, making it a prosperous centre of travel and of traffic. A canal, running forty miles up the Rappahannock, brought, before the rebellion, great quantities of tobacco, flour, and wheat into the town, to be transported, by rail, to the South. Thirty years ago its prosperity was very great, and on the increase. For some unexplained reason, the tide of success was stayed, and finally began to recede, leaving it, in the early days of the rebellion, a town of minor importance, with a small population of only four thousand inhabitants. Its changing fortunes during the progress of the war had made it rapidly the centre of interest, before the bloody fight of December 13th, 1863, which added its name to the long list of our country's hallowed fields. During the blockade of the Potomac, it was the chief dépôt of supplies for the rebels. They evacuated it in haste upon McClellan's advance towards Yorktown, and General McDowell took possession of it. After the disastrous Seven Days' Battles, McDowell fell back, and it was again occupied by the rebels. In August, General Burnside, when he marched to the aid of General Pope, held it for a few days. But upon his retreat to Warrenton, the rebel flag was again unfurled upon its river-slopes. The valley of the Rappahannock narrows at Fredericksburg, giving but little more than a bed for the river. The banks rise in natural terraces on each side. Those on the southern side are three in number, each from a quarter to half a mile in width. The town is situated on the first, which slopes steeply down to the water. The second was the scene of the great fight which we are about to describe. The third, forming the crest, was the line which the rebels had planted thick with their deadly batteries. The hills, as they recede from the river, are more and more wooded; and spurs, densely grown with low trees, run down from the ridges into the plain, making tangled ravines and impassable barriers. Three miles below the town, on the southern banks of the river, there is a plain six miles in length, and two and a half in breadth. Woods mark its first rise, which thicken into a forest as the ground becomes higher. On the northern bank the Stafford hills. hang closely over the river for miles, fully commanding the terrace on which the town of Fredericksburg stands. These hills, strongly fortified with cannon, gave us the power to cross the river without any effectual opposition by the enemy. The most ordinary observer, standing upon the crest of the southern hills, and looking down upon the terraced slope to the riverthe narrow plain of the town-the semicircular lines of natural and intrenched defences, rising one above the other, might readily have shuddered at the suggestion of an attempt on the part of the National forces to cross the stream and attack the formidable positions of the rebels. But the gallant, sanguine, and magnanimous Burnside believed that the heights could be carried by storm, and the rebel forces separated and beaten on the plain. The plan for crossing the Rappahannock and giving battle to the foe had been discussed and assented to by the President, General Halleck, and the Secretary of War. General Burnside made a change simply in the time of executing the plan, owing to the arrival of supplies more quickly than he had anticipated, and to his discovery of the fact that the enemy were totally unprepared for any attempt at Fredericksburg, but were looking for the crossing at other points. It is but justice to General Burnside to put upon record his own assertion, after the disastrous result of the battle, that his success would have been entire, except for the unexpected delay in building the bridges, which gave the enemy ample time to concentrate their whole force at the precise point where it would be most effective. That this contingency should have formed an element in his calculations cannot be denied. But there is something extremely touching in the simple-hearted honesty of his preliminary report to the President, six days after the battle, wherein he said: "For the failure of the attack I am responsible, as the extreme gal lantry, courage, and endurance shown by them (the patriot soldiers) was never exceeded, and would have carried the points, had it been possible. But for the fog, and the unexpected and unavoidable delay in building the bridges, which gave the enemy twenty-four hours more to concentrate his forces, in his strong positions, we should almost certainly have succeeded." On the night of the 10th of December, 1862, the work of laying the pontoon bridges commenced. Silently the small parties of engineers, with their frail-looking boats, clustered on the river-banks. The grand Army of the Potomac, with its three good fighters, Hooker, Sumner, and Franklin at its head, was concentrated and alert within a stretch of only six or seven miles, on the northern shore of the river, whose current rolled that night under the shadow of Death. The greatest excitement prevailed in all the camps. Three days' rations and sixty rounds of cartridges had been given to each man. Each man knew that a fight was at hand. Each man thought of victory, of death, of home, in a confusion of exulting hope, of depressing apprehension, of pressing haste to be ready. Hundreds of our camp-fires blazed through the river-mists, and were answered back by the picket-fires of the rebels on the opposite shore, angry, red specks in the black gloom. Orderlies dashed to and fro. Artillery-trains jarred and rumbled over the roads. Cheery men, taking their last supper together in their tents, sang patriotic songs, in strains that swelled loud on the heavy air, prophetic of that martyrdom which is the price of peace and the crown of heroes. Quick, scattering musketshots snapped, now and then, in the distance. The night wore on, until, long before light, the shrill bugle-call brought every man to his feet. One after another, in fighting trim, the regiments fell in, and from all points marched towards the river. But the laying of the bridges, always a hazardous task if opposed, was in this case a task of extremest difficulty and peril. As soon as the river-fogs lifted sufficiently to make it apparent to the enemy that the bridges opposite Fredericksburg were commenced, sharpshooters were posted at every window looking out on the water, behind every tree af fording a cover, and at every possible point which would enable them to pick off our brave pontonniers. The bridges opposite the town were only two-thirds done when the sun arose. It was impossible to continue them under the fire from hundreds of rebel sharpshooters. Our own sharpshooters made vain attempts to dislodge the sheltered foe. In the language of the colonel of the Seventh Michigan: "Under the protection of brick houses, cellars, and rifle-pits, the rebels could laugh at us with impunity." One hundred and forty pieces of patriot artillery opened from the heights, upon the part of the town from which the sharpshooting proceeded. It produced no effect, however, upon the murderous rebel fire. The workmen fell dead or wounded as fast as they took their stands upon the boats. It was clearly an impossibility to complete the bridges unless the sharpshooters were in some way silenced. In the mean time the enemy were massing their forces, hurrying back from the points below, at which they had been looking for our crossing, and where they had posted their artillery to mow us down. It was a fearful moment! Honor to the Michigan Seventh, whose colonel was not afraid to pledge them as volunteers for the desperate venture of crossing the river in the pontoon-boats, and dislodging the rebel riflemen from their hiding-places ! The arrangement was made that the sappers and miners should man the boats and row the soldiers across. For half an hour the brave Michigan boys stood drawn up on the bank ready to spring into the boats at an instant's signal. But the engineer officers could not induce their men to undertake the perilous enterprise. Flashing with scorn of cowardice and delight in danger, the Western heroes, as soon as they perceived the state of the case, rushed into the boats, pushed them off, and rowed themselves undauntedly into the raining fire. The river, at this point, was two hundred yards in width--a short distance, but it seemed interminable to the anxious thousands who watched from the banks, and saw brave men, one after another, drop their oars and fall back from their seats dead. The passage was won, however, and the regiment charged gallantly up the steep slope of the shore, drove the rebels out of the rifle-pits, and out of the buildings fronting the water. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Massachusetts Regiments pressed on after their heroic pioneers as rapidly as possible, and did a noble share of the bloody work in the town-holding the ground firmly until the bridges were completed, and the entire wing of the army to which they belonged had crossed in safety. General Franklin had succeeded in laying his bridges at a point three miles lower down the river, without serious opposition, and his entire command crossed with little loss. A part of General Hooker's Division had also crossed below the city. Thursday night found us in possession of its streets. Severe musket skirmishes had contested our approach at every point. But the rebel pickets had constantly fallen back, withdrawing into the centre of their circling line of hill defence, whose strength we little comprehended. The exploding shells had, in the course of the day, set fire to many houses in the city, and the slow, mouldering smoke of the burning mingled with the white wreaths of the bombs and the black clouds from the artillery. It was a night of terrific confusion. Long after dark the great guns blazed and thundered from the hills. Sumner's grand division, in massive columns, was steadily pressing on towards the river. The tramp of thousands of men and horses, and the ponderous wheels of the heavy trains, made a deep undertone of accompaniment to the cannons' notes. Friday's sun rose clear and bright, and in a few hours had dissipated much of the fog and smoke which veiled the river and the town. The pontoon bridges were thronged with our forces marching across in good cheer; and the banks on either side were crowded with regiments just forming after the passage of the river, or drawn up in line awaiting their turn to cross. The bands of the different regiments were playing patriotic airs, as gayly as if on parade, uninterrupted by the shrill screech of the shells rushing through the air, or the booming of the artillery in the distance. The city itself presented a scene of desolation and ruin. Nothing had escaped the effects of our bombardment on the previous day. Smoking cellars and piles of charred timbers were all that remained of many houses; while others were so rent and riddled by shot, as to be of little more value. The streets were obstructed, in many places, by fallen chimneys, fences, and walls. Trees were prostrated and torn, as if thunder-bolts had smitten them. Here and there, under the pitiful shelter of their leafless and broken branches, lay blackened corpses, which seemed to have been struck down by the same flash. The houses were nearly stripped of furniture; the few articles which had been left were soon in the possession of the Union soldiers, who swarmed through the streets. Some of them, for a few hours, held riotous carnival, decking themselves in the apparel, and breaking up the household utensils of the inhabitants of Fredericksburg. Their license, however, was soon checked by the energetic measures of General Patrick, the Provost-Marshal, who ordered the instant arrest of any soldier who should be found with any such article in his possession. The spoils of tobacco were abundant, and were most greedily sought for and hoarded up by our men, who had been almost deprived of the luxury for a few months by the extortionate prices charged by the sutlers. General Burnside was occupied during the entire day in directing the crossing and disposition of the different corps. The big gray horse was seen galloping from point to point with the tall martial figure of his rider sitting firm in his saddle, erect, alert, and sanguine. Through all the movement the batteries of the foe were inexplicably and ominously silent. By the middle of the afternoon every street in the town swarmed with our troops, and had the town been shelled our loss would have been immense; but still the rebel cannon were silent. Skirmishing musket-shots were exchanged by the pickets, and occasionally, for a few moments, bombs were thrown at some exposed file of men. But the silence of the frowning heights, which we knew to be thickly mounted with guns, was unaccountable, and, to a discriminating observer, significant of evil. It does not appear, however, to have occurred to the excited officers, in their preparations for the assault, that this silence—this quiet permission of their approach-boded any ill. An eye-witness of the fight thus graphically describes the infatuated confidence of some of the leading officers in the forenoon of Friday: "In answer to inquiries as to the meaning of the enemy's silence they replied, 'The enemy have not ammunition to spare.' Another said, 'Oh, a bombardment don't amount to any thing, any how.' Another, They don't care about bombing us; it is an inconsequential sort of business; we threw four thousand shells yesterday, and it amounted to nothing." Another, General Lee thinks he will have a big thing on us about the bombardment of this town; he proposes to rouse the indignation of the civilized world, as they call it; he is playing for the sympathies of Europe.' Another thought that the enemy were retreating, and that a laugh would be raised at Burnside's expense when the true facts were discovered. A |