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THE ORDERS
At his headquarters in the Phillips house, on high ground about a
mile from the river, Burnside rose early on the morning of December 13
to dictate orders for his grand division commanders. He chose James A.
Hardie, a staff brigadier and a West Point classmate of Franklin's, to
carry the instructions for the left wing commander. Burnside asked
Hardie to remain with Franklin during the day and telegraph news of his
progress frequently. Hardie took the orders at 6:00 A.M., guiding his
horse over a glaze of ice and mud.
Franklin's orders directed him to position his entire command "for a
rapid movement down the old Richmond road" adding that he should "send
out at once a division at least to pass below Smithfield and seize, if
possible, the height near Captain Hamilton's, on this side of the
Massaponax, taking care to keep it well supported and its line of
retreat open. At the tail of the order Burnside alluded to holding
Franklin's main body "in readiness to move at once, as soon as the fog
lifts."
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BURNSIDE DIRECTED THE BATTLE FROM THE PHILLIPS HOUSE, EAST
OF THE RIVER. TWO MONTHS LATER, UNION SOLDIERS ACCIDENTALLY SET FIRE TO
THE HOUSE WHILE COOKING, DESTROYING IT.
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The written orders therefore suggested that Franklin's assault on
Prospect Hill should commence immediately, in the fog, while the balance
of the Left Grand Division should wait until visibility improved.
Apparently Burnside intended to capture that dangerous concentration of
cannon under cover of the fog, surprising the gunners before they could
do much damage; by then the mists would probably have begun to
dissipate, and Franklin could see where he was going with the rest of
his wing. So, too, would Lee be able to witness Franklin's flank
movement, which might convince him to shift troops from Marye's
Heights.
Burnside and Franklin had discussed the battle plan the previous
evening, and perhaps Burnside depended too heavily on Franklin's
apparent comprehension of his wishes. But Franklin later claimed that,
when Hardie arrived with the formal orders, sometime after seven
o'clock, they contradicted his understanding of the plan: Franklin
insisted he had been slated to launch an all-out assault on Lee's right,
while the orders seemed to reduce his role to a diversion. For all his
future complaints about the clarity of his orders, however, he asked no
questions about them that morning, and within half an hour of Hardie's
arrival Franklin had chosen George G. Meade's division of Pennsylvanians
to lead the assault.
On the right, Burnside sent Sumner orders to attack Marye's Heights
by way of the Telegraph and Orange Plank roads. With his penchant for
understatement Burnside also told Sumner to begin his assault with "a
division or more," though the artillery arrayed on the heights obviously
called for more, but Burnside asked Sumner to hold off on the movement
until he joined him at his headquarters.
(click on image for a PDF version)
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ON THE EVE OF THE BATTLE: DAWN, DECEMBER 13
Burnside is ready to attack. Franklin's grand division is massed around
the Bernard mansion, "Mannsfield," two miles below Fredericksburg, while
the troops of Sumner's grand division form ranks in the streets of the
town. Hooker's troops remain on the east side of the river, ready to go
where needed. Lee, meanwhile, has contracted his tine, drawing
Longstreet's corps to the left of Deep Run to make room for Jackson's
corps, which arrives on December 12-13, and takes position on the right.
Two brigades of Stuart's cavalry guard the Confederate right, near
Massaponax Creek.
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Franklin proved woefully unfamiliar with the lay of the land in front
of him. The Richmond Stage Road followed the river for a couple of miles
beyond Franklin's headquarters and a mile past the plantation known as
Smithfield, whereupon it veered south, around Hamilton's Crossing. Two
other roads branched off in that direction before that point, however,
and these appear to have confused both Franklin and Burnside. In an
earlier order Burnside had described Franklin's route as "down the
Richmond road, in the direction of the railroad," but the stage road ran
parallel to the railroad all along the front here, even after the turn
at Hamilton's Crossing. Evidently Burnside mistook the Mine
Road—the second of those right turns—for the stage road, for
that road did cross the railroad at Hamilton's. (On his map of the
battle a division commander on Franklin's front labeled that the Bowling
Green Road, which was another name for the Richmond Stage Road.) An
assault by Franklin's command on both sides of this road might have been
quite effective, but Franklin erred even further, choosing the first
road to the right. This was little more than a local farm lane that
turned from the stage road abreast of Smithfield—rather than below
Smithfield, as Burnside had instructed. Nor did this lane flank the
position at Hamilton's Crossing; instead, it ran head-on into Stonewall
Jackson's infantry.
It was nine o'clock before Meade deployed his division. He commanded
fifteen regiments, most of them veteran Pennsylvania Reserves who had
fought from the outset of the war, and that morning the three
brigades brought about 6,500 rifles to bear. After reaching the
erroneous turn Franklin had indicated, Meade called for pioneers to chop
passageways through the thick hedges that bordered the highway, and
he asked for engineers to fill the deep ditches, so artillery might
follow him. All of that done, he arranged two of his brigades in columns
of attack three hundred yards apart and turned the third perpendicular
to these two, facing his vulnerable left flank. Even as he
moved out, the last stragglers of D. H. Hill's division dropped,
breathless, alongside their comrades behind Hamilton's Crossing. Had
Franklin followed the route Burnside intended, he would have run right
into these exhausted troops. Jackson's corps was now completely
reunited, and his 39,000 men lay four and five brigades deep along the
final mile and a half of that forested ridge. J. E. B. Stuart extended
the Confederate right toward the Massaponax with two brigades of
cavalry.
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WILLIAM B. FRANKLIN (BL)
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CONFEDERATE TROOPS AT HAMILTON'S CROSSING (BL)
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Meade had no more than begun his advance when shells started dropping
into the ranks from his left and rear. Under John Pelham, the
24-year-old major commanding
Stuart's horse artillery, two Confederate guns had ranged ahead from
Stuart's line to pester the Federal assault. Pelham's shells raked
Meade's first two brigades, leaving the Pennsylvanian no choice but to
deal with the irksome brace before continuing. Skinnishers trotted out
from Meade's perpendicular brigade and Union artillery turned against
Pelham's pair of cannon, but the young major kept his guns moving
between rounds, preventing the Yankees from finding his range. His
sporadic fire nonetheless kept Meade motionless for more than an hour
and Pelham still blazed away with one gun after the other was disabled,
but finally Stuart ordered him to bring the surviving piece back to
safety. With Jackson's defensive line complete, there seemed no point in
delaying the enemy further.
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THOMAS J. "STONEWALL" JACKSON (THE VALENTINE MUSEUM)
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GEORGE G. MEADE (BL)
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Meade's corps commander, John E. Reynolds, offered him what support he
could by throwing Abner Doubleday's division just below Smithfield to
bar any assault along the stage road and by posting John Gibbon's
division to Meade's right and rear. Meade would bear the brunt of the
effort, though, and once the adjoining
units had reached their positions he started forward.
When they stepped off again, Meade's men encountered a soggy lowland
just before the railroad. The marshy ground broadened out beyond the
tracks, where accumulated runoff from the ridge offered uncomfortable
passage in the December cold. Not wishing to subject his own men to a
position in the bog, and doubting the enemy could traverse it, A. P.
Hill had allowed a six-hundred-yard gap between the front-line brigades
of James H. Lane and James J. Archer. As luck would have it, that is
precisely where Meade's attack struck, and the Pennsylvanians waded deep
into Confederate lines before they met much resistance. The third
brigade swung behind Archer's, gobbling up scores of Georgians and
Tennesseeans and driving three of Archer's regiments out of their rude
breastworks. Meade's leading brigade wheeled to the right, causing even
greater trouble among Lane's North Carolinians, while the other Keystone
brigade rolled straight ahead into the void. It was beginning to look to Meade
as though his assault might succeed despite
mistakes and delays, but the general could not see the three lines of
Confederates that lay in the woods beyond.
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DEATH HAS BEEN DOING FEARFUL WORK TODAY
Among the Union soldiers attacking Stonewall Jackson's line was a
young Pennsylvanian named Jacob Heffelfinger. In the following diary
passage, written while the battle still raged, Heffelfinger describes
the Union army's initial success at Prospect Hill and its ultimate
repulse.
4 1/2 P.M.—The battle has raged fiercely today. The
rebels occupy an advantageous position. Our troops are on an open plain,
while they occupy a ridge in our front, and are sheltered by dense wood
but about 1 1/2 P.M. one part of the line made a forward movement, our
division, as usual, taking the advance. This was a fearful movement. We
left the field over which we advanced, thickly strewn with our dead and
wounded. We drove the rebels from their position in the rail-road cut at
the edge of the wood. On entering the woods our line was thrown into
confusion by a misunderstanding of orders, but our men pushed on boldly
and reached the summit of the hill. During the confusion I received a
shot through both legs, completely disabling me. Our men were soon after
attacked by the enemy in heavy
force, and being weakened by the great slaughter in our ranks while
advancing, and wholly without support they were driven back over me in
disorder. All that we gained at so fearful a cost is lost. I am still
lying where I fell. The rebels have advanced a line over me, so that I
am a prisoner. I am now exposed to the fire of our artillery which is
fearfully destructive. Death has been doing fearful work today.
Jacob Heffelfinger,
7th Pennsylvania Reserve
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JACOB HEFFELFINGER (B. N. MILLER)
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A LETTER FROM THE BATTLEFIELD
A soldier in the Pee Dee Artillery of South Carolina wrote
his father the night of the battle, describing his experiences in
repelling the Union attack at Prospect Hill.
CAMP NEAR
FREDERICKSBURG,
DECEMBER 13, 1862 -
SATURDAY NIGHT
DEAR FATHER -
I promised to write you immediately after the fight. All day yesterday
we lay in position. Today I have been in the hottest fight I have ever
heard of. From ten o'clock this morning till an hour or two since shot
and shell, and Minie balls, having been perfectly hailing around me. All
the other fights crowded into one would hardly make anything to be
compared to today's fight. Our battery has lost three men killed and
sixteen wounded, eighteen or twenty horse, one limber and one caisson blown
up, and one gun disabled . . . . A piece of
shell went through my coat sleeve; it stung a little. A Minie ball went
through the ramrod, and it or a splinter struck me on the head. I was by
the gun looking at the Yankees when a great piece of shell, big as my
two fists, came along and knocked a spoke out of the wheel, and it or a
piece of the spoke, or something else, hit me square in the breast. I
did not know whether I was mortally wounded or not, but after a while I
opened my shirt, and found that the skin was not bruised. I saw a piece
of shell go a "kiting" by my leg, missing it an inch or two. That is
only a few of the narrow escapes that I made today. The trees around our
guns were literally torn to pieces and the ground plowed up. I have been
several times covered with dirt, and had it knocked in my eyes and
mouth . . . .
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PROSPECT HILL AS IT APPEARS TODAY (NPS)
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We were posted on a chain of hills. Just in the edge of the woods
before us was a wide level plain extending to the river, some three or
five miles wide. I could see fully half the whole Yankee army, reserves
and all. It was a grand sight seeing them come in position this morning;
but it seemed that that host would eat us up any how. I felt uneasy
until I saw Gen. Lee, and right behind him the "Old Stonewall," riding
up and down our lines, looking at the foe as cooly and calmly as if they
were only going to have a general muster. The Yankee batteries came into
position beautifully, and commenced shelling the woods we were in. It
was hard to take it, but we had strict orders not to fire. Their
infantry advanced in beautiful order. When one thousand yards distant we
poured a perfect storm of shell into them from fifty or one hundred
guns, but on they came. Our infantry was too much for them they had to
leave. Oh! it did me good to see the rascals run; but here comes a fresh
line. Far as the eye can reach the line extends. They have the fate of
their predecessors, but another new line advances. I had been uneasy,
perhaps scared before, but now had death or defeat been offered me I
would have taken the former. Some of our bravest were down . . . .
Pegram's men (a Virginia battery stationed by our side on the right) had
left their guns. Capt. Pegram wrapped his battle flag around him,
walking up and down among his deserted guns. It was a time to test a
man's courage. Our cannon flamed and roared, and the roar of musketry
was terrific. The foe halts, wavers and flies. We double charging our
gun, pour the canister among them. As they get out of range of that we
send them an occasional shell to help them on. "Cease firing!" What
means that yell to the right. No one answers, nor do we need an answer,
for our gallant boys are seen pouring from the woods, double quicking on
the charge. On they go, (Gregg's brigade leading) nearly up to the
Yankee batteries. How my heart did beat then. My hat couldn't stay on my
head. I would have hollered if I had been killed for it the next minute,
simply because I couldn't help it.
Affectionately yours,
BEN
Published in the
Charleston Daily Courier, December 30, 1862
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UNION TROOPS CHARGE ACROSS THE R.F. & P.
RAILROAD IN THEIR ATTACK ON STONEWALL
JACKSON'S POSITION AT PROSPECT HILL. (BL)
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Before long, however, Meade's onrushing riflemen discovered the first of
those Confederates in the forest. Maxcy Gregg's five South Carolina
regiments lay resting in the new military road Burnside sought, their
arms stacked at Gregg's insistence to avoid an accidental volley into
the backs of the front-line brigades. The collision surprised the
Pennsylvanians almost as much as the recumbent South Carolinians, but
the Yankees leveled a furious fire and scattered the first regiment
while the rest of Gregg's men ran for their weapons. Gregg, who was
forty-eight and rather deaf, thought they had fallen into the tragic
error he had most feared: he anticipated that no enemy would burst out
of the woods unless retreating Confederates preceded them, so he rode
into his troops to stop the firing. Galloping about in full regalia, he
drew a flurry of Union fire and fell from the saddle with a bullet in
the spine while his fleeing men streamed past him.
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JOHN PELHAM (THE VALENTINE MUSEUM)
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That was Meade's high-water mark. The survivors of Gregg's brigade
rallied, and two brigades from nearby divisions came to their
assistance—including the one that had won Stonewall Jackson his
nickname seventeen months before. That blunted the Pennsylvanians' momentum
and a Georgia brigade filed down to confront Meade's right-hand
regiments. Artillery on Prospect Hill began to harry Meade's third
brigade, on his left, while six regiments of Georgians and Virginians
groped through the brush to contend with that side of the breach. Meade
directed his brigadier on the left, Conrad E. Jackson, to work his way
uphill until he could swing behind the troublesome guns and capture
them, but General Jackson was killed just as he began the movement. His
men advanced a little farther without him, coming to a halt when the
Confederate reinforcements stalled the leading brigadier.
The Pennsylvanians shot it out with nearly twice their number while
thousands more Southerners stood ready to take them on if they came any
farther. Yet Franklin never dispatched a man from Doubleday's
division to Meade's assistance, and Gibbon's division made no progress
at all on Meade's right, where it faced the three regiments of Lane's
brigade that Meade had not scattered and other Southern units on Lane's
left. Gibbon wasted his strength in three piecemeal attacks on the
railroad embankment, and one after the other his
first two brigades fell apart. The third barely reached the tracks, but
Gibbon could go no farther because no one had advanced to protect his
right flank: the nearest friendly troops lounged half a mile behind him.
All or part of five other Union divisions—upwards of 40,000
officers and men—lay within a mile of
Meade's fight, but despite an appeal for help the only practical
assistance Meade received came from fewer than two thousand men in
Gibbon's surviving brigade.
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MAXCY GREGG (BL)
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(click on image for a PDF version)
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MEADE BREACHES HILL'S LINE: DECEMBER 13, 1:00 P.M.
After an hour-long artillery duel, Meade's division goes forward,
penetrating a 600 yard gap in A.P. Hill's line. Lane's right flank is
turned, while Gregg's and Archer's brigades are driven back. Gibbon
advances to support Meade on the right, engaging a portion of Lane's
brigade at the railroad, while Doubleday's division move
downriver to secure the intersection recently vacated by Pelham. Smith's
Sixth Corps remains quietly in position near the bridgehead, while
Birney's division of Hooker's grand division crosses the river and moves
up in rear of Meade.
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(click on image for a PDF version)
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JOHN ROBINSON'S BRIGADE ADVANCES TO COVER MEADE'S RETREAT. AS
ROBINSON'S HORSE FALLS TO THE GROUND, PINNING ITS RIDER, COLONEL
CHARLES COLLIS SNATCHES THE FLAG OF THE 114TH PENNSYLVANIA INFANTRY
AND LEADS IT FORWARD AGAINST THE ADVANCING CONFEDERATE LINE. (NPS)
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Meade's men began to run out of ammunition. More than a quarter of
his division lay dead or wounded now, while the Confederate ranks kept
swelling, and finally the Pennsylvanians began backing out of their
hard-fought forest. The retreat quickly degenerated into a rout, though,
with men running pell-mell for the rear. Gibbon's last brigade helped
discourage Confederate pursuit for a time, but then it fled, too. One of
David Birney's Third Corps brigades came up to cover the retreat, and a
couple of Birney's regiments fanned out in an unsuccessful attempt to
stay Meade's fugitives. Birney's men could only fill the void left by
their frantic comrades, who did not stop until they had crossed the
stage road. A Confederate counterattack dogged the shattered Federal
line, taking up whole companies of Meade's lagging troops, but a
point-blank blast from First Corps artillery and a steady fire from
Birney's infantry stopped it.
(click on image for a PDF version)
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JACKSON COUNTERATTACKS: DECEMBER 13, 1:30 P.M.
Jackson counters Meade's attack by advancing Early's and Taliaferro's
divisions. Disorganized, tired, and outnumbered, Meade's men fall back
to the railroad and then to the Bernard house, where they reform.
Atkinson's brigade pursues Meade onto the plain but quickly retires to
the railroad when confronted by Birney's division and by Union
artillery fire. After briefly securing a lodgement along the railroad,
Gibbon too must fall back and reform near the Bernard house.
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It was now two o'clock. Like many of his senior officers, Meade felt he
could have broken the Southern line with support from available troops,
and he burst into General Reynolds's headquarters, raging over the
failure to send him timely assistance. For three hours, though, William
Franklin had been feeding James Hardie encouraging information to send
to Burnside, including the news that the enemy was gathering for an
attack on the Federals' extreme left. Supposing, perhaps, that Lee had
begun swinging his strength to the southern end of his line, Burnside
took that good news as his cue for launching Sumner's attack.
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