|
FREDERICKSBURG FINALLY TARGETED
Stymied again, Burnside realized that he could not now make an
uncontested crossing anywhere, so he decided to bridge the river where the
enemy would least expect it—right in front of the city. Despite
Burnside's warning to evacuate the civilian population, Lee had
expressed doubt that he would ever strike there, or that he would try to
lay his pontoons anywhere between there and Port Royal because the banks
were so difficult. In fact, Lee anticipated the very plan Lincoln had
proposed, with Burnside landing at Port Royal under the protection of
navy gunboats and marching to cut the Confederates off at Bowling Green
while Banks's army (which Lee had learned of) struck up one of the
rivers at Lee's back.
Jackson's earthworks at Skinker's Neck convinced Burnside that Lee had
divided his army between there and Fredericksburg, and he supposed he
might throw down his bridges quickly, step between the two halves, and
defeat the enemy in detail. At the least, he could hope to confront
Longstreet's corps before Jackson arrived to reinforce him.
|
EDWIN V. SUMNER (BL)
|
Burnside's eldest and most devoted lieutenant, General Sumner, had
proposed a radical plan to the commanding general. Citing the firepower
the Confederates could converge on the bridgeheads from the city
waterfront, Sumner thought the entire army could more easily cross on
the plain below town if enough artillery were brought up to support it.
Then Burnside could march around Lee's right flank by the main road,
abandoning his own line of supply and forcing Lee to fall back and
protect his. Fredericksburg might thus be taken with much less loss.
Sumner's design was a good one. He was not the only one to think of it,
and Burnside apparently considered it for a time, but eventually he
opted for a more complicated strategy that might not only keep Lee off
guard but impede his escape. He would divide his forces, crossing
Sumner's Right Grand Division into the city and Franklin's Left Grand
Division onto the plain downstream, while keeping Hooker's Center Grand
Division for a reserve. Franklin would hit the Confederate right at
Hamilton's Crossing, and Sumner would assail the heights beyond
Fredericksburg, forcing Longstreet to either stand and fight while
Franklin flanked him or to retreat in the face of a direct onslaught.
Not only would such an approach be more likely to dislodge Longstreet,
it might throw his corps into a rout and lead to its capture, either in
whole or part.
(click on image for a PDF version)
|
BURNSIDE IS POISED TO CROSS THE RIVER: DECEMBER 10
Prior to crossing the river, Burnside masses his troops near
Fredericksburg. Sumner's grand division is camped closest to town, near
Falmouth; Franklin is three miles to the east, at White Oak Church;
while Hooker's troops are in reserve, near Stafford Court House. On the
Confederate side, Longstreet holds a seven-mile line stretching from the
Rappahannock River above Fredericksburg to Hamilton's Crossing, below
the town. Jackson's corps is scattered over a wide area between
Hamilton's Crossing and Port Royal, while Stuart's cavalry guards the
army's flanks.
|
Burnside issued preliminary orders outlining his plan on December 9, and that
evening General Sumner called his corps and division commanders together
to familiarize them with the details. Major General Darius N. Couch, in
charge of Sumner's Second Corps, said that most of the senior generals
doubted the army would be able to cross in front of Fredericksburg;
perhaps they shared Sumner's fear that forewarned Confederate infantry
and artillery could annihilate any troops who crossed on bridges there.
|
CHATHAM
Across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg, on the bluffs
overlooking the town, stands Chatham a plantation house built by William
Fitzhugh beginning in 1768. At the time of the Civil War the house was
owned by J. Horace Lacy, a major in the Confederate army.
Union troops occupied Chatham for the first time in April 1862, when
General Irvin McDowell set up headquarters at the house. McDowell
brought a corps of 30,000 men to Fredericksburg. He halted his command
at Fredericksburg for a month in order to bring up supplies, after which
he planned to march on Richmond. President Abraham Lincoln journeyed to
Fredericksburg to confer with McDowell about the proposed movement and
on May 23 dined with him at Chatham. That very day, Stonewall
Jackson's Confederates attacked Union troops in the Shenandoah
Valley and briefly threatened Washington, D.C. As a result of Jackson's
success, Lincoln ordered McDowell to forgo his march on Richmond and
take a portion of his command to the Valley instead. General Rufus King
took over command at Fredericksburg in McDowell's absence and moved into
Chatham.
|
CHATHAM: A WARTIME VIEW (USAMHI)
|
The next prominent figure to come to Chatham was General Ambrose
Burnside. The War Department summoned Burnside to Virginia in August to
reinforce Union troops defending Washington. While waiting for his
troops to debark at nearby Belle Plains, the genial, bewhiskered general
camped on Chatham's front lawn. While there, he received a visit from
his friend General George B. McClellan, whose troops, like Burnside's,
were then steaming north on ships to protect the threatened capital.
On September 17 McClellan defeated Lee at Antietam, and the
armies again drifted back to Virginia soil. Antietam was McClellan's
last battle. Annoyed by the general's hostile attitude and frustrated
by his unwillingness to bring Lee to battle, Lincoln ousted McClellan in
November 1862 and appointed Burnside to command the Army of the Potomac
in his place.
Burnside quickly took action. Within ten days after assuming command, he
had his army marching east, toward Fredericksburg—and disaster.
Leading the march was General Edwin V. Sumner, the 65-year-old
commander of Burnside's Right Grand Division. Sumner reached Falmouth,
opposite Fredericksburg, on November 17, but Burnside forbade him to
cross the river without pontoon bridges, which did not arrive for
another week. By then, Lee's army occupied the heights behind the
town.
For three weeks Burnside delayed, pondering his options. When he finally
tried to cross the river at Fredericksburg on December 11, Mississippi
riflemen barred the way. Burnside wrathfully shelled the town and in
the afternoon ferried troops across the water. The Mississippians held
their ground until sunset, then fell back to the main Confederate line
at Marye's Heights. By dark, Union engineers had bridged the river in
several places with pontoons.
On December 12, Sumner's Right Grand Division filed past Chatham on its
way to the bridges. The next day, with his army in place, Burnside
attacked. William B. Franklin assailed the southern end of the
Confederate line, while Sumner's men gallantly, but unsuccessfully,
tried to storm Marye's Heights. Forbidden by Burnside to cross the
river, Sumner watched the destruction of his command from Chatham's
second-story porch.
By the time the battle had ended, 1,200 Union soldiers were dead and
another 9,500 had been injured. Many of the wounded soldiers received
care at Chatham. Clara Barton assisted wounded soldiers at the house as
did poet Walt Whitman, whose brother George was numbered among the
casualties. For surgeons working in Chatham's north wing, amputation was
the order of the day. Surgeons tossed mangled limbs out the window, and
they landed at the foot of catalpa trees in the front yard. A huge pile
of limbs accumulated there—about a load for a one-horse cart,
Whitman noted. Patients who survived the ordeal were sent to general
hospitals in the North. Those who did not were wrapped in woolen
blankets and buried beneath Chatham's cold sod. At least three soldiers
remain buried on the grounds to this day; the rest have since been
interred at the Fredericksburg National Cemetery.
The Union army wintered in Stafford County after the Battle of
Fredericksburg. Union pickets guarding the river cut down Chatham's
trees and piled the wood in the downstairs fireplaces to keep warm. As
the trees disappeared, they tore paneling from the building's interior
for fuel and scrawled their names on its barren walls.
|
A NEW JERSEY SOLDIER MADE THIS SKETCH OF
CHATHAM WHILE CAMPED IN THE AREA. (CUMBERLAND COUNTY, NEW JERSEY,
HISTORICAL SOCIETY)
|
Meanwhile, the Army of the Potomac gained a new leader. In January 1863,
Joe Hooker replaced Ambrose Burnside as the army's commander. Hooker
led the army across the Rappahannock River above Fredericksburg in May
and engaged Lee at Chancellorsville. At the same time, General John
Sedgwick's Sixth Corps and John Gibbon's division of the Second Corps
crossed the river at Fredericksburg and menaced the Confederates from
the coast. Gibbon made his headquarters at Chatham—the last Union
general to do so.
Sedgwick successfully attacked the Confederates at
Marye's Heights, but later retreated across Scott's Ford when
confronted by Confederates at Salem Church. Gibbon (whose division had
remained in Fredericksburg) likewise withdrew, taking up the pontoons
behind him. Once again Chatham became a scene of cruel suffering, as
wounded soldiers—North and South alike—found care and shelter
within its walls. When space on the dirty floors gave out, tents were
erected on the grounds around the house.
By the time the war ended in 1865, Chatham was in desolation. The
house's elegant interior had become a ruin: its beautiful grounds, a
graveyard. The property languished until the 1920s when General and Mrs.
Daniel Devote restored the house to its former splendor. Chatham's last
owner, John Lee Pratt, donated the house to the National Park Service in
1975. Today it is the headquarters for Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania
County National Military Park.
|
The next afternoon, December 10, Burnside chaired his own conference at
the Lacy mansion, Chatham, with Sumner and the chief officers of the
Second, Third, and Ninth corps. He said he planned to begin building the
bridges before dawn the following day. Debate over the news rose
immediately and lasted for hours. Burnside's subordinates apparently
resisted him, challenging the wisdom of bridging the river there. Many
of the men on Sumner's staff suspected that any crossing before the city
would be attended with great slaughter, but the meeting appears to have
ended with everyone agreeing to give the operation his best effort. From
there Burnside rode away to brief Hooker and Franklin.
|
|
