December 13, 1862---The Battle of Fredericksburg: Day Three

DECEMBER 13, 1862:         

The Battle of Fredericksburg (Day Three). 

The Confederate Army is ranged along the crest of a natural amphitheater created by the topography of Fredericksburg. To the east lay the Rappahannock River. To the west stood the line of bluff hills fortified by Lee, which included Taylor's Hill, Marye's Heights, Howison Hill, and Telegraph Hill.

Below Marye's Heights a 2000-foot portion of Telegraph Road, the main thoroughfare to Richmond, was worn by years of wagon traffic into a sunken roadway. Stone retaining walls marked the edges of this peaceful stretch of country highway, turning this bucolic setting into a ready-made battle trench. A limited number of men could hold this place against an army---specifically, the Army of The Potomac.

The other end of the Confederate line was held in force. Without a natural defense like the Sunken Road, Stonewall Jackson compensated by stacking his four divisions one behind the other to a depth of nearly a mile. Any Union offensive against Lee's seven-mile line would, by necessity, traverse a virtually naked expanse in the teeth of a deadly artillery crossfire before reaching the Confederate infantry. 

General Burnside’s attack orders sent his men directly at this gauntlet. He planned an assault against Jackson's troops, followed by an advance against Marye's Heights. There was no maneuvering---this was to be a full-on frontal assault. Burnside further confused and frightened his commanders with his tentative and unclear directives, indicating his own uncertainty as to the lay of the land, the disposition of troops, and his own command abilities.

The Battle of Fredericksburg was comprised of two major actions on this day:

1.       The Battle of Prospect Hill:    The battle began in earnest at 8:30 AM as the Federals advanced toward the Confederate positions on Prospect Hill, which opened up with a howl of artillery, tearing long and bloody gaps into the Union line. Enfilade fire from the flanks cut into the Union formations, and the troops were pinned down, being slaughtered for nearly an hour under Confederate shot and shell. Hardly had this first barrage ended, when the Stonewall Brigade began their own barrage. At this point, the living joined the dead in lying on the ground, trying to find whatever cover they could, even the undulations of the open, mostly flat field. 

At  9:30 AM, the Union batteries opened up in the direction of the Confederate lines, and the brutal slaughter continued as shells crashed into the Rebel lines or fell short, killing Union soldiers. Union fire struck the main Confederate corral, giving the place the name of “Dead Horse Hill.” Under this hail, the Union troops reorganized and charged---right up to and through Jackson’s line. Confederate reserves came pouring into the gap, and lethal hand-to-hand fighting ensued. The Union troops were pushed back almost to their own lines, but Union reserves prevented a rout. Instead, the assault on Jackson’s line was abandoned. 

2.       The Battle of Marye’s Heights:         Marye's Heights, were, if anything, more difficult to assault than the lower-lying Prospect Hill.  To take the Heights, Union soldiers would have to leave the city, cross a difficult undulating terrain bisected by a canal, and then cross rising open ground to the base of the bluff that was Marye’s Heights. For virtually that entire approach they would be under the guns of the Confederates atop the bluff. "A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it," boasted on Confederate cannoneer.

The first assault on Marye’s Heights began at noon and set the pattern for a ghastly series of attacks that continued, one after another, until dark. As soon as the Federals marched out of Fredericksburg, Confederate artillery wreaked havoc on them. The Union troops encountered a deadly bottleneck at the canal ditch which was spanned by partially-destroyed bridges at only three places. The slow-moving troops were picked off by sharpshooters. Once across the canal, the landscape provided virtually no protection for the troops. Scores of Southern batteries immediately opened on their easy targets and when the surviving Federals had traversed about half the open field, a sheet of flame spewed forth from the Sunken Road. This rifle fire decimated the Northerners. Few survived.

  

Just as Burnside had done at the bridge at Antietam, he stupidly and blindly continued to try to force his men’s way through the enemy’s line, directly into the face of gunfire and cannons. Rather than pulling back and recognizing the futility of his battle plan, the General expended entire divisions trying to take the Stone Wall. In less than one hour, the Army of the Potomac lost nearly 3,000 men; but the madness continued. The Confederates stood four ranks deep, maintaining a ceaseless musketry while the gray artillerists fired over their heads. Corpses and the immobilized wounded lay so thick on the ground that their fellows had no choice but to trample on them in their advances before they joined them in being trampled as part of Fredericksburg’s ghastly ground cover. Ultimately, the Union was to make fifteen fruitless, pointless, bloody, ghoulish unit charges at the Stone Wall. 

"We came forward as though breasting a storm of rain and sleet, our faces and bodies being only half- turned to the storm, our shoulders shrugged," remembered one Federal. Part of one brigade sustained its momentum until it drew within 25 yards of the stone wall. Almost all were slain. Not a single Union soldier laid his hand on the stone wall.

Lee, from his lofty perch on Telegraph Hill, watched the almost casual destruction of Burnside's divisions. Turning toward Longstreet, Lee confessed, "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."

Of the 114,000 Union troops engaged, 12,653 were casualties, including 1,284 killed, 9,600 wounded, and 1,769 captured or missing. Confederate losses were much less: Of the 73,000 Confederate troops engaged, 5,377 were casualties, including 608 killed, 4,116 wounded, and 653 captured or missing. Of the nearly 13,000 casualties, over 8,000 were inflicted at the Stone Wall. 

As darkness shrouded the battlefield, the big guns fell silent. The living who remained on the icy cold field lay quiet, using corpses as breastworks, hearing the smack of bullets into the dead all night long as Confederates tried to pick off the wounded. The cries of the wounded and dying were "weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear,” according to Burnside, who, perhaps a little maddened, wanted to renew the assault on the Stone Wall with himself leading the charge. He was dissuaded from doing so by his officers, who barred his way from headquarters.

Testament to the extent of the carnage and suffering during the battle was the story of Richard Rowland Kirkland, a Confederate Army sergeant with Company G, 2nd South Carolina Volunteer Infantry. Stationed at the stone wall by the sunken road below Marye's Heights, Kirkland had a close up view to the suffering and like so many others was appalled at the cries for help of the Union wounded throughout the cold winter night of December 13, 1862.

After obtaining permission from his commander, Brigadier General Joseph B. Kershaw, Kirkland gathered canteens and in broad daylight, without the benefit of a cease fire or a flag of truce (refused to him by Kershaw), provided water to numerous Union wounded lying on the field of battle. Union soldiers held their fire as it was obvious what Kirkland's intent was. Kirkland was nicknamed the "Angel of Marye's Heights" for these actions, and is memorialized with a statue by Felix de Weldon on the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park where he carried out his actions.

Late that night, the Aurora Borealis lit up the sky in a cosmic display of indifference to the fate of men. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who would soon distinguish himself for gallantry at Gettysburg, was one of the living on the battlefield that night. He was later to write: "Who would not pass on as they did, dead for their country's life, and lighted to burial by the meteors splendor of their native sky?”