Battle of Fredericksburg

Background

In November 1862, President Abraham Lincoln needed a Union victory to maintain public confidence. Confederate armies had invaded Kentucky and Maryland earlier that fall but had been turned back while remaining intact. Lincoln urged Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to advance on Vicksburg and replaced Maj.

Gen. Don Carlos Buell with Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans for a more aggressive posture in Tennessee. On November 5, seeing that Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan had not acted after the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln replaced him with Maj.

Gen. Ambrose Burnside, commander of the IX Corps. Burnside had succeeded in coastal North Carolina and lacked political ambitions, but he felt unqualified for army-level command and accepted only after learning that McClellan would be replaced regardless and that the alternative was Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, whom Burnside disliked. Burnside assumed command on November 7.

Battle

Union engineers began assembling six pontoon bridges before dawn on December 11. Those constructing the bridge opposite the city came under fire from Confederate sharpshooters, primarily from Brig. Gen. William Barksdale's Mississippi brigade. Union artillery with 150 guns proved mostly ineffective against the sharpshooters in house cellars.

Burnside's artillery commander, Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt, convinced him to send infantry landing parties in pontoon boats. Col. Norman J. Hall volunteered his brigade; after his men cheered, Burnside relented. At 3:00 p.m., Union artillery bombarded the town, and 135 infantrymen from the 7th Michigan and 19th Massachusetts crossed, followed by the 20th Massachusetts.

They cleared the sharpshooters street by street as engineers completed the bridges. Sumner's Right Grand Division began crossing at 4:30 p.m., with the bulk crossing by December 12; Hooker's Center Grand Division crossed on December 13. The clearing of the city began the war's first major urban combat. Union gunners fired over 5,000 shells at the town and western ridges.

By nightfall, four Union brigades occupied Fredericksburg and looted it extensively, angering Lee and shocking many on both sides. Civilian casualties were unusually low, with George Rable estimating no more than four deaths.

Aftermath

The Union army suffered 12,653 casualties, including two mortally wounded generals: Brig. Gens. George D. Bayard and Conrad F. Jackson. The Confederate army lost 5,377, most on Jackson's front; Confederate Brig. Gens. Maxcy Gregg, T. R. R. Cobb, and William Dorsey Pender were wounded, with Cobb and Gregg mortally.

The southern flank produced roughly equal casualties (about 4,000 Confederate, 5,000 Union), but the northern flank was lopsided, with about eight Union casualties for each Confederate. Over half the Confederate army did not participate. The South celebrated the victory; the Richmond Examiner called it a "stunning defeat to the invader." Lee was described as jubilant but later wrote that he was depressed, noting they had gained no ground and that the enemy could easily replace losses. Burnside withdrew his army on December 15.

Battlefield preservation

The Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, established in 1927 under the War Department and transferred to the National Park Service in 1933, covers more than 8,300 acres across four Civil War battlefields: Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania Court House, The Wilderness, and Chancellorsville. In March 2003, the Civil War Trust announced a $12 million national campaign to preserve the Slaughter Pen Farm, a 208-acre tract known locally as the Pierson Tract.

This land saw heavy fighting on December 13, 1862, where Federal troops under Maj. Gen. George Meade and Brig. Gen. John Gibbon assaulted Lt. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's Confederates. The fighting produced 5,000 casualties and five Medal of Honor recipients.

The farm was the largest remaining unprotected part of the battlefield and the only place where visitors can follow the Union assault from start to finish. The acquisition was called the most ambitious nonprofit battlefield acquisition in American history. In October 2006, the Department of the Interior awarded a $2 million grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust committed $1 million toward the campaign.

Did You Know?

• The battle was depicted in the 2003 film Gods and Generals, based on the novel of the same name.
• American author Louisa May Alcott fictionalized her experience nursing soldiers injured in the battle in her book Hospital Sketches (1863).
• American heavy metal band Iced Earth included a song inspired by the battle, titled "Clear The Way (December 13th, 1862)", on their 2017 album Incorruptible.