by Mark Nesbitt
The Confederates were not about to retire without a fight, and the battle took on a character that would become the bloody hallmark of wars of the next century and a half. A new type of tactical fighting needed to be learned by warriors—house-to-house, urban street fighting—and it began in Fredericksburg.
Confederates defended the town from the alleys and backyards behind Sophia Street; by occupying the Southern troops, the 7th Michigan was buying time for the engineers to complete the bridges. Massachusetts troops were ferried across to bolster the Wolverines, and as the bridges were completed, they were ordered to advance beyond the waterfront and push the rebels out of the town to make room for more Union solders to land via the bridges.
Federals muscled their way up Hawke Street, taking awful casualties at the intersection of Hawke and Caroline; the 20th Massachusetts lost 97 men in and around the intersection. Night fell early in December and still the fighting went on. Backyards became battlegrounds and dooryards deathtraps. One Federal broke into a second-floor room and was shot through the window by a Confederate across the street. The fighting was illuminated by musket flashes. Men were wounded by splinters flying from brick chimneys and wooden framing. The horror of not knowing from which window or doorway the next shot would come was demoralizing. Finally, with the groans of the wounded echoing through the darkened street, the lack of light brought an end to the carnage. By 7:00 P.M. most of the firing died down and Confederates began retreating from the town.
With Confederate resistance in the city of Fredericksburg quelled, December 12 was spent by Union forces crossing the Rappahannock into the city. Burnside ordered his chief signal officer to run a telegraph line from occupied Fredericksburg across both the lower and upper pontoon bridges, then to connect his headquarters with the far left flank of the army. The communicating device was a clever magnetic “pointer” system: dial a letter on the sending device and the pointer spins to the same letter on the receiver. It was claimed to be the first time the magnetic telegraph was used on the battlefield. It wouldn’t be the last.
Federals drained five feet of freezing water from a canal between them and Marye’s Heights, a ridge west of the city. They also began looting. Wanton destruction began in what had once been one of the finer cities of the South. Private homes were vandalized, libraries sacked, fine arts destroyed, personal treasures stolen, and businesses ransacked beyond anything that had happened in the war previously. Nineteenth-century war was not supposed to be waged upon civilians; Fredericksburg changed that.
Federal assaults were planned for dawn on December 13, 1862. Northern forces under Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin (one of Burnside’s three “Grand Divisions”) were to launch the attacks from the old Smithfield Plantation east of the Bowling Green Road, across the Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad to strike Confederates under Stonewall Jackson near Prospect Hill. Franklin used Maj. Gen. George G. Meade’s division and Brig. Gen. John Gibbon’s division, totaling about 8,500 men, for the assault.
The morning dawned opaque and misty. The Union assault, which was to get off early, had been delayed. It was nearing 10:00 A.M. when the fog began to rise. Like ghosts, the Federal troops moved out of the haze, crossed the Bowling Green Road and headed toward the railroad. Suddenly, there were muffled artillery discharges from their left and rear. Maj. John Pelham, the twenty-four-year-old commander of J. E. B. Stuart’s Horse Artillery, had used the fog to gain position and raked the Union line, halting its advance. Ordered to retire from the exposed spot, he refused, and fought, suffering serious counter-battery fire from the Federals, until his ammunition was gone. Pelham, with one gun, had managed to hold up the entire Federal assault for an hour. After Pelham withdrew, Meade continued his advance. Jackson’s men waited patiently until the Federals were within 500 yards of a forested hill hiding 14 cannons, then opened fire. Gaps opened in the Federal ranks and Union soldiers dropped into whatever depressions they could find near the railroad and in the open fields beyond.
Jackson’s guns drew fire from Federal artillery and there ensued an hourlong duel. So many artillery horses were shot down that the rebels renamed the place “Dead Horse Hill.”
When the Confederate fire died down, Meade’s men continued their advance and struck a 600-yard gap in Jackson’s line that had been inadvertently left unguarded. In their drive through the Confederate line they ran into a brigade of South Carolinians. Confederate Brig. Gen. Maxcy Gregg mistook the Yankees for retreating Southerners and withheld his fire. It cost him his life. He was shot in the spine and later died.
Though Jackson had left a space in his line, he had arranged his reserves in column. During the breakthrough he launched them into the fought-out Union spearhead. The massive Confederate counterattack pushed Meade’s men all the way back across the railroad and back to the Bowling Green Road. Once the Confederates got in range, they were stopped by the massed Union artillery. Both Federals and Confederates tried additional assaults in the late afternoon, but both failed. The carnage at one point was so terrible, the area was christened “The Slaughter Pen.”
Burnside’s overall plan was to wait for success on the southern end of the field, then launch assaults upon the Confederates at Marye’s Heights, just to the west of the city of Fredericksburg. Burnside ordered the Grand Division of Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner to advance against James Longstreet’s Confederates.
Just before noon, Union infantry, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, emerged from the streets of the city and began crossing the open fields between Fredericksburg and Marye’s Heights. Almost simultaneously, Confederate artillery from atop the heights began lobbing shells into their packed ranks. Men remembered seeing arms, hands, legs and clothing flying into the air above their heads, the hideous result of artillery fire upon massed ranks of infantry.
In front of the Union troops lay a millrace, fifteen feet across and five feet deep, partially filled with freezing water. The only places to cross it were at bridges over three streets leading out of town. These quickly became bottlenecks as Confederate skirmishers, upon their retreat, removed the floors of the bridges leaving just the “stringers” for hundreds of Union troops to attempt to cross. Once across the millrace, the Northerners had to realign their ranks and push on. The last impediment to the Union assault was a wide-open field known as the Fair Grounds, which was swept by Confederate rifle fire from a virtually unseen enemy standing behind a chin-high stone wall in a sunken road.
Assault after assault repeated the same horrifying and deadly routine. Some of the surviving Union troops found shelter behind the few fence posts left around the Fair Grounds. Other sought relief behind the few buildings in the area: a brick grocery building called Sisson’s Store, a house, and wheelwright shop owned by the Stratton family. Men and officers piled up behind these structures, like flotsam in the lee of an island during a storm. Throughout the afternoon and into the evening the futile assaults continued.
Fifteen Federal brigades tried to pierce the Confederate line. Men were cut in two by shells, entrails flying in all directions. They were decapitated, and slumped, some still kneeling, headless, clinging to their muskets. Unbelievably, one man was seen running past an advancing column, without a head, until he tumbled into the millrace. One Confederate saw around the Stratton House that the dead were so thick you could walk on them. Holding their fire only made the slaughter easier for Confederates. Toward the end, the fallen wounded clutched at the legs of the fresh units trying to stop their comrades from a certain death.
The “butcher’s bill,” as the soldiers called the casualty list, was appalling. In one hour full of horror the Union army lost 4,000 men. All totaled, Burnside lost 12,600 in killed, wounded, and missing, with some 8,400 casualties occurring below the stone wall and sunken road. Lee lost about 5,300.
Fredericksburg Ghosts
Most of the buildings in Fredericksburg were scenes of deadly conflict, and the very streets were fought through. Both armies left dead and wounded strewn along the path
visitors now walk in Fredericksburg. Of the hundreds of buildings here during Civil War years, some 350 remain, many perhaps holding forever the spirits of the slain. Nearly every public building and many private homes were used as hospitals.
As well, four hundred years of history has resulted in countless restless, perturbed spirits. From its Colonial heritage to the horror of being the focal point of four major Civil War battles (Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania), Fredericksburg has seen more history and more human tragedy than virtually any other city in America. Between 1862 and 1864, more than 100,000 men and boys became casualties in the fighting in and around the town; most were brought to Fredericksburg to be operated upon, recover, or perish.
The personal civilian calamities and the military terror brought on by the numerous and bloody battles may very well account for the reference to Fredericksburg as “the most haunted city per capita in the United States.”
A Haunted House on Caroline Street
On December 11, 1862, after initially fighting a delaying action through the streets of Fredericksburg, the Confederates withdrew to the heights west of the city, there to repulse numerous, bloody Union attacks two days later. Union troops occupied the town, prying into private pantries, pilfering what they needed, and peering out windows of private homes, looking for the enemy, or to avoid their own provost guard.
Fast-forward to the twentieth century. According to a woman whose family has lived in Fredericksburg for well over a hundred years, renovation was going on in one of the historic buildings along Caroline Street near William Street. The new owner had spent all day tearing up old carpeting. He had finished for the day and rolled it up and placed it in the hall in order to facilitate the workmen removing it the next day. It is well known in paranormal circles that whenever there is a renovation to an historic building, there is more likelihood of paranormal experiences occurring. It is almost as if the spirits do not want their routine, their status quo, disturbed. So it was in this case.
Trash men were coming the next afternoon. As he left for the night, the owner told the workmen to remove the rolled-up carpet first thing next morning and put it by the curb. The next morning, when he arrived at the work site, there was no carpet at the curb. At first he was angry because he knew that their disobedience would cost him time, and in the construction business, time is money. He sought out the foreman and gave him a dressing-down. The foreman then took him upstairs to show him why they hadn’t removed the carpet. When his men arrived to work in the morning, the carpet was no longer in the hall. He opened the door to the room. There the carpet was, laid down again, with tacks in place.
The owner was rightfully concerned and apparently felt immediately that there was something paranormal going on. He called his priest. The priest came to inspect the area. He walked upstairs to the room. He cautiously opened the door to the room in question and was greeted by the sight of several ghostly Union soldiers across the room peering out of the windows. The priest left and told the owner that he’d pray for the souls to be on their way.
Upon leaving, he said something ominous, spawned perhaps by something else he witnessed in that room, but would not talk about. He said he would also pray for the owner.
Footprints at Caroline Street Cafe
One of the tragedies of the American South before the Civil War was the forced enslavement of fellow human beings. Even in the South, slavery was considered the “peculiar institution.” Many southerners emancipated their slaves long before the war; but others, with large farms to manage, realized that they just couldn’t get along without slavery. Fredericksburg was part of the slave-holding South.
Of the town’s 3,000 inhabitants in 1835, 1,124 were slaves. On the corner of William and Charles Streets is the auction block, which was used, among other things, for the display and sale of human beings. It is interesting to imagine that along with the ghosts of tens of thousands of Civil War soldiers who died to either free slaves or maintain a lifestyle that included slavery, that there could also be the spirits of long-dead slaves, still in bonds of a more ethereal but still unbreakable kind.
People think that ghost stories are relegated to the past. This is not true. This one comes to us from July 2005. Someone in the Caroline Street Café was looking for something. They entered an upstairs room that had been habitually sealed off since it had been last cleaned. Indeed, the person found something, but it was not what she expected. Stretching across the floor were the footprints of a large male.
They were bare footprints, and they were etched in white, walking from one side of the abandoned room to the other and back again, as if pacing, and waiting for something to happen or someone to come and release the spirit from its centuries-long incarceration. Someone in authority was called and shown the footprints. “Well, let’s wash them off,” was the sentiment. But try as they might, the footprints would not wash off. The room was closed, but inspected frequently after that. Slowly, over a couple of weeks, the footprints faded from sight, returning to an unseen world whence they came.
Smythe’s Cottage
On the corner of Fauquier Street and Princess Anne stands a small Civil War–era building that has been used for years as the site of several restaurants. A few years back it was called Smythe’s Cottage, and according to the owners, both patrons and employees have experienced unexplainable paranormal phenomena over the years.
An employee would go around lighting candles. Returning from the other room she would see that some had been blown out. Setting tables with silverware in Smythe’s Cottage before the customers came in was often frustrating: The silverware was often moved out of place. Both of these activities were known to occur when there were no other people in the room. Those and other seemingly paranormal phenomena are blamed on a woman the owners call “Elizabeth,” who is believed to have committed suicide by hanging herself in the stairway leading to the second floor.
Elizabeth, according to legend, was a Union sympathizer. With Fredericksburg occupied by Union soldiers during the Civil War, one can only speculate why she would pass important information on to the enemy, although it easily could have been done. It is also rumored that the building during the war was used as a bordello, no doubt by Union troops. Whether Elizabeth was involved in this fraternization with the enemy is unknown, but the rumor is that, whatever she was doing, her husband caught her and accused her of treason toward the South and infidelity to him. The shame was too much and was the apparent reason for her suicide.
The children of the owner when the building was Smythe’s Cottage had experiences on the second floor of the house. One, when he was eleven years old, watched as the closet doors began to open by themselves while he was the only person in the room. Frightened, he ran from the room. His younger brother, at age nine, saw a whitish mist begin to come out of the same closet. More recently, a patron in the back room of the restaurant saw a short, heavyset woman in a long, dark, “old-fashioned” skirt and white apron move swiftly past his table as if she had a mission in mind; she went out into the garden, which is enclosed by a tall, wooden fence. Interestingly enough, it was at the same time some ghost hunters were conducting a paranormal investigation. They rushed out after the woman. By the time the investigators reached the inescapable garden, she had vanished.
While the investigators were there, other paranormal events were recorded. In the same room where Elizabeth had been seen, a bowl containing sugar and artificial sweetener crashed to the floor and broke. No one had been in the room when it happened. The investigators caught some odd lights on tape moving in opposite directions—obviously not reflections from car lights, which would move in the same direction, over and over, as cars passed. And the closet door, which the owner’s son had seen begin to open before he beat a hasty retreat, was recorded on the tape moving, ever so slightly, as if someone were trying to open it.
And most ominously, there are the reports from patrons and servers that as they pass the stairway
that leads to the second floor, their peripheral vision is disturbed by a swinging motion at the top of the stairs. They look, and for a split second, they see a spectral woman floating, as if hanging in midair at the top of the stairs, swaying and then disappearing.
There is a portrait of Union general Ulysses S. Grant that used to hang next to the stairway. In a town that saw so much destruction by the Union armies, in a house that witnessed the destruction of a family by the circumstances of war, the portrait seems to be a disturbing reminder of all that tragedy. Owners of the building will come into the house in the morning to find the portrait angled. They straighten it and make sure it’s still straight at the end of the day when they lock up, and for a few days it stays that way. Then, another morning, the image of the man who symbolized so much human agony for the South is tilted again. Finally, one morning, the owners entered the building after straightening the picture when they left the night before. They were shocked and confused to find the picture turned around, facing the wall.
St. George’s Episcopal Church
Looking at its skyline from across the Rappahannock River, Fredericksburg seems to have an abundance of churches. Sharp steeples break up the horizon, a scene virtually unchanged since Union soldiers saw it from the same spot some fifteen decades before.
One of the larger churches in the city is St. George’s Episcopal Church. It boasts the oldest congregation in Fredericksburg. In 1732, it was George Washington’s church, when he lived across the river at his boyhood home, Ferry Farm. George’s mother Mary Washington worshipped in the original church on the site. The present St. George’s Episcopal Church, actually the third on this site, was built in 1849. Just outside is a graveyard; the oldest stone is dated 1752, and Col. John Dandridge, father of Martha Washington, and William Paul, brother of John Paul Jones, are buried here.