Battle of Fredericksburg (1862): Disaster at Marye's Heights

The Battle of Fredericksburg, fought from 11 to 15 December 1862 in and around the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, was one of the most one-sided Union defeats of the American Civil War. General Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac crossed the Rappahannock River and launched repeated assaults on Robert E. Lee’s Confederates, who held strong positions on the hills behind the town. The attacks on the stone wall below Marye’s Heights became a byword for futile slaughter.

Background: Burnside’s plan

After the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, President Abraham Lincoln grew frustrated with General George B. McClellan’s slow pursuit of Lee and replaced him with Burnside on 7 November. Burnside, who had twice declined the command, reorganised the army of about 120,000 men into three “grand divisions” under Edwin Sumner, Joseph Hooker and William Franklin.

His plan was to move quickly to Falmouth, cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg on pontoon bridges and march on Richmond before Lee could react. The army reached Falmouth by mid-November, but the pontoons, delayed by confused orders, did not arrive for about a week. By then Lee had concentrated roughly 75,000 men on the heights west of the town, with James Longstreet’s corps on the left and Stonewall Jackson’s corps on the right.

The crossing, 11-12 December

On 11 December Union engineers began laying pontoon bridges under fire from Mississippi sharpshooters of William Barksdale’s brigade, hidden in the town’s buildings. Union artillery bombarded Fredericksburg, and infantry finally crossed in boats and cleared the streets in house-to-house fighting, one of the first urban battles of the war. Union soldiers then looted the town on 12 December, while the rest of the army crossed.

The assaults of 13 December

Burnside intended his main effort on the Union left, where Franklin’s grand division faced Jackson at Prospect Hill. Franklin attacked late in the morning with only part of his strength. George G. Meade’s division found a marshy, undefended gap in Jackson’s line and briefly broke through, but it was not supported and was driven back by Confederate counterattacks.

On the right, Sumner’s and then Hooker’s troops advanced from the town towards Marye’s Heights. To reach it they had to cross about 400 to 600 metres of open ground cut by a drainage ditch, under fire from Confederate guns on the hill. At the base of the heights, Confederate infantry stood in a sunken road behind a stone wall, firing in relays. Brigade after brigade attacked; most accounts count around fourteen separate charges, including that of the Irish Brigade. None reached the wall. Confederate General Thomas R. R. Cobb was mortally wounded defending it.

Watching from his command post, Lee is reported to have said that it was well that war was so terrible, or men would grow too fond of it. Many Union wounded lay on the frozen field through the night.

Withdrawal and aftermath

Burnside wanted to lead a renewed attack himself on 14 December, but his commanders talked him out of it. After a truce to collect the wounded, the army recrossed the river during a storm on the night of 15-16 December.

The defeat badly damaged Northern morale. In January 1863 Burnside’s attempt to cross upstream collapsed in torrential rain, an episode remembered as the Mud March, and on 26 January Lincoln replaced him with Hooker, who would meet Lee again at Chancellorsville in May. The poet Walt Whitman travelled to the army after Fredericksburg to look for his wounded brother George, an experience that led him to years of volunteer work in military hospitals.

A well-known story says that a Confederate sergeant, Richard Kirkland, carried water to wounded Union soldiers in front of the stone wall, earning the name “the Angel of Marye’s Heights”. It rests on later testimony, and historians debate its details.

Why the attack failed

Historians generally place most of the blame on Burnside, who kept attacking long after it was clear that the heights could not be taken, although the late pontoons, vague orders to Franklin and the strength of Lee’s position all played a part. The Confederates had time to prepare, and the open ground before Marye’s Heights gave attackers no cover.

Timeline

• 1862, 7 November: Burnside replaces McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac.
• 1862, 17 November: Union troops reach Falmouth, but the pontoons have not arrived.
• 1862, 11 December: Union engineers bridge the Rappahannock under fire; the town is bombarded.
• 1862, 13 December: Assaults at Prospect Hill and Marye’s Heights fail.
• 1862, 15-16 December: The Union army withdraws across the river.
• 1863, January: Burnside’s Mud March fails; Hooker takes command on 26 January.

Why it matters

Fredericksburg showed how deadly well-placed defenders with rifled muskets and artillery could be against massed frontal attacks, a lesson that would be repeated throughout the war. It ended 1862 on a low point for the Union in the East and gave Lee’s army a confidence that carried it into the campaigns of 1863.