Gary W. Gallagher - The Fredericksburg Campaign: Decision on the Rappahannock

The military events that unfolded along the Rappahannock River on a cold December 13, 1862, are well known and seemingly uncomplicated. Ordered forward by Ambrose E. Burnside, a commander usually portrayed as supremely inept, thousands of Union soldiers in the Army of the Potomac flung themselves against well-protected Confederates in a series of desperate and doomed assaults. Nightfall ended a slaughter that claimed more than 12,500 northern casualties. After flirting with the idea of resuming the attacks on the fourteenth, Burnside reluctantly pulled his battered army back across the Rappahannock. R. E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia could only watch the withdrawal, unable to follow up their easy defensive victory because Union artillery on Stafford Heights covered the retreating infantry. A few weeks later Burnside was gone, a new Federal commander prepared to engage Lee along the same stretch of Virginia landscape, and the fighting at Fredericksburg apparently had changed nothing.

A pair of quotations attributed to Lee and Abraham Lincoln probably sum up the essence of the battle of Fredericksburg for most students of the Civil War. On December 13, Lee saw Confederate infantry repulse a Union thrust and then pursue their enemy out of some woods and onto a plain west of the Rappahannock. According to John Esten Cooke, a member of Jeb Stuarts staff, the commanding general turned to James Longstreet and said in low tones, It is well this is so terrible! we should grow too fond of it! These two brief sentences have done much to define Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia for generations of readers: the brilliant soldier, his martial ardor aroused, quietly exulting as the men of his famous army demonstrated their prowess on yet another battlefield.

A third contemporary quotation evokes the memorable physical setting at Fredericksburg and also hints at the destruction visited on the city. Artillerist Edward Porter Alexander, who helped place the southern guns that would torment Union attackers on the thirteenth, left a vivid description of the sights on December 11 as Burnsides soldiers prepared to cross the Rappahannock: The spectacle which was now presented from the Confederate hilltops was one of the most magnificent and impressive in the whole course of the war, wrote Alexander in his widely read memoirs.

The city, except its steeples, was still veiled in the mist which had settled in the valleys. Above it and in it incessantly showed the round white clouds of bursting shells, and out of its midst there soon rose three or four columns of dense black smoke from houses set on fire by the explosions. The atmosphere was so perfectly calm and still that the smoke rose vertically in great pillars for several hundred feet before spreading outward in black sheets.... The dark blue masses of over 100,000 infantry in compact columns, and numberless parks of white-topped wagons and ambulances massed in orderly ranks, all awaited the completion of the bridges. The earth shook with the thunder of the guns, and, high above all, a thousand feet in the air, hung two immense balloons. The scene gave impressive ideas of the disciplined power of a great army, and of the vast resources of the nation which had sent it forth.

These and other familiar passages from the literature on Fredericksburg admittedly capture much of the battles meaning and drama, but the topic offers ample possibilities for further exploration. Many questions of interest to a new generation of historians have not been asked about Fredericksburg; others await investigators who will exploit hitherto neglected unpublished sources as well as the large body of printed material on the battle. The contributors to this volume, who as a group consulted both readily available and obscure materials in preparing their essays, hope to persuade readers to reconsider some comfortable assumptions about the campaign, to think about aspects of the battle and its aftermath that have received little if any previous attention, and to place the military action in a larger social and political context.

Civil War scholarship reaches an almost perfect consensus about Ambrose E. Burnsides competence to command an army. Excoriated as a man of scant vision who refused to modify his plans in the face of changing circumstances, Burnside lumbers through innumerable accounts as a well-meaning but pitifully inept officer whose lack of strategic or tactical skill wasted thousands of Union lives. William Marvel confronts this portrait head-on, arguing that Burnside, for all his faults, had reason to believe he might achieve tactical success on December 13. Poor performances by key subordinates contributed to the Federal debacle at Fredericksburg, insists Marvel, and self-serving postwar accounts by Burnsides enemies helped shape the generals enduring negative image. Readers at ease with the dominant interpretation of Burnside might not be won over, but they will find much to challenge their thinking.

Alan T. Nolans assessment of Lees generalship at Fredericksburg also should inspire a strong reaction. Firmly convinced that Lee displayed too much aggressiveness on many occasions, Nolan applauds his handling of the campaign against Burnside. Unlike the Confederate raids across the Potomac in the fall of 1862 and summer of 1863, occasions when Nolan believes Lee unnecessarily precipitated costly battles, the Unions direct strategic challenge to Richmond and the Army of Northern Virginia in November 1862 required a response. Lee controlled his usual desire to seize the offensive and fought a sound tactical battle that blunted Burnsides move and conserved precious Confederate manpower. Although the campaign showed Lee at his best, stresses Nolan, its outcome in no way modified the generals predilection for the strategic and tactical offensive. The Gettysburg campaign left no doubt that Fredericksburg was an aberration in Lees career during 1862 and 1863.

George C. Rables essay examines the process by which northerners and southerners struggled to come to terms with the cost of Fredericksburg. The North had an especially difficult time coping with what appeared to be pointless carnage, but Fredericksburg sent shock waves through both societies. The reports of prolific slaughter, of civilians driven from their homes by artillery fire and rampaging soldiers, and of barbarities inflicted on the wounded prompted troubling questions about civilized norms of behavior and fueled a search for scapegoats. Soldiers reconsidered their notions of courage, while many inside and outside the army looked anew at their religious assumptions. Overall, Rable provides a powerful case study of the myriad ways in which battles cast shadows that linger well beyond the close of fighting.