December 15, 1862---The Battle of Fredericksburg: Day Five

DECEMBER 15, 1862:        

The Battle of Fredericksburg (Day Five). 

The Union withdraws from Fredericksburg leaving a ruined city, thousands dead and wounded, and a shamed General. 

Ambrose Burnside is, not surprisingly, soon relieved of command of the Army of the Potomac. A man of steadfast courage and determination, he simply lacked the mental flexibility to adapt to changing conditions. Though he had excelled at seizing Confederate ports on the eastern seaboard earlier in the year, his performance at Antietam---an agonizingly slow and painful assault on a nearly unusable, strategically worthless bridge in the teeth of heavy enemy resistance---was a virtual practice run for the killing field he created at Fredericksburg. Burnside, once set on an objective, simply couldn’t improvise, adapt or overcome according to conditions, measure the cost of an objective in relation to its value, or, it seems, understand just what was happening on his battlefields.

Although Fredericksburg was an unalloyed Confederate tactical victory, it gained them no ground, nor did it blunt the Union war effort. Robert E. Lee had spent precious war materiel, not to mention precious lives, in a vicious battle that accomplished nothing. And unlike the North, it was already very obvious that the South could not replace its losses.