Clouds of Glory

by Michael Korda

  Only in replying to Mary, did Lee let his feelings show: “to know that I shall never see her again on earth, that her place in our circle, which I always hoped one day to enjoy, is forever vacant, is agonizing in the extreme. But God in this, as in all things, has mingled mercy with the blow, in selecting that one best prepared to leave us. May you be able to join me in saying ‘His will be done!’” He ended on a bleaker note: “I wish I could give you any comfort, but beyond our hope in the great mercy of God, and that he takes her at the time and place when it is best for her to go, there is none.”

  Lee could not attend Annie’s funeral—he would not take leave for a family tragedy when his soldiers were allowed none—but he selected the lines that would eventually be carved on Annie’s granite obelisk, from a hymn which she asked to be sung as she was dying:

  Perfect and true are all His ways

  Whom Heaven adores and earth obeys.

  Lee finally gave his army two months for “Rest, food, refitting, and discipline,” the last a gift from General McClellan, who although his own army was soon brought up to full strength, showed no inclination to cross the Potomac and move against Lee. In the meantime Lee was willing to wait—certain that there would be one more campaign before winter set in. He was sure that McClellan would move against Richmond again, and preferred to see from which direction so that he could fight him on ground of his choosing. He took steps to formalize the separation of his army into two wings, promoting both Jackson and Longstreet to the rank of lieutenant general, and did his best to remedy his deficiencies in supply and ordnance—no easy task in the beleaguered Confederacy. The period was not without events: Harpers Ferry was retaken by the Federals—no great loss to Lee, since Jackson had already removed the contents of the arsenal—and Lee sent Stuart on another highly publicized raid eighty miles right around McClellan’s army all the way into Pennsylvania, recrossing the Potomac with 1,200 Federal horses he had captured along the way.* Stuart saw no sign of activity on the part of McClellan, nor indeed did the White House, to the growing irritation of the President. Lincoln had taken to referring to the Army of the Potomac unflatteringly as “McClellan’s bodyguard.” When McClellan complained that he could not contemplate making a move because his cavalry horses were exhausted, Lincoln replied, with unusual waspishness for him, “Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue anything?” At last, on October 26, McClellan began to cross the Potomac in full force. It took over a week for the whole army to cross, during which time Lee, who had moved his headquarters to Culpeper, was uncertain whether the Federals would proceed down the Shenandoah Valley toward Staunton and then turn east toward Richmond, or take the shorter, classic route to the Rappahannock in the hope of reaching Hanover Junction and attacking Richmond from the northwest. If they did the former, Lee could rely on Jackson to hold them back. If the latter, Jackson could attack the Federal forces from the Blue Ridge Mountains, while Longstreet defended Richmond. In either case, Lee would be outnumbered. He now had just over 70,000 men, against about 114,000 Federals, but these were not the kind of odds that gave Lee pause. On November 10, however, electrifying news reached him: Lincoln had at last lost patience with George C. McClellan and replaced him with Major General Ambrose Burnside.

  Lee had respect (which President Lincoln did not share) for McClellan’s professional ability but also felt that he could usually predict what McClellan, a fellow engineer, would do. He did not have the same certainty about Burnside, who he thought was less able, and probably uncomfortable with his new responsibility. In this he was perfectly right: Burnside had already turned down command of the Army of the Potomac once before on the grounds that he was not qualified for it, and this time it took some argument before he was finally “persuaded . . . to accept,” with what appears to have been genuine reluctance. “[Burnside] is as sorry to assume command as I am to give it up,” McClellan wrote graciously to Mrs. Burnside.

  No less an authority than Ulysses S. Grant thought that Burnside was unfit to command an army; and worse still, Burnside knew it. On the surface, he was jovial, bluff, popular, and good-natured, but his eyes, like those of many fat men, betrayed a certain degree of obstinacy, and perhaps a strong resentment at the possibility that he was not being taken seriously. On the other hand, Burnside was no fool. He had resigned from the army in 1858 to manufacture an ingenious breech-loading carbine of his own design,* gone bankrupt through no fault of his own—a fire destroyed the factory in which the carbines were being manufactured—entered politics in his native Rhode Island only to be defeated in a landslide, and reentered the army at the outbreak of war as a brigadier of the Rhode Island Militia. His appointment to high command was not based on professional ability or any discernible gift for strategy. His qualifications were that he appeared amiable; projected a certain stolid, bulky authority; and, most important of all, was not McClellan.

  Burnside’s plan to advance quickly on Richmond by the most direct route was a daring change from McClellan’s. He intended to “give up the Orange & Alexandria railroad [to which McClellan had attached much importance], base himself on Aquia Creek, and from Fredericksburg march directly upon Richmond,” hoping to race there before Lee could concentrate his forces to stop him. Lincoln, who was by now something of an expert* on the various ways of approaching Richmond, remarked cautiously—and shrewdly—that Burnside’s plan might work “if [he] moved very rapidly, otherwise not.” The president would have preferred to use the overwhelming strength of the Army of the Potomac, now close to 120,000 men, to attack Lee before Jackson could join him from the Shenandoah Valley instead of trying to take Richmond again, and had little faith in Burnside’s elaborate plan to deceive Lee about the direction of his advance by concentrating his army at Warrenton, then making a swift move to the southeast, outflanking Longstreet, and crossing the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg.

  It remains hard to understand how Burnside imagined that he could keep Lee and Longstreet focused on Warrenton while he moved the bulk of his forces toward Richmond, particularly since he was in enemy country, where every farmer and villager was a Confederate. Speed was the essence of Burnside’s strategy, but whatever other qualities he may have had, he lacked the ability to inspire the War Department to supply his needs quickly. Since the bridges across the Rappahannock where he intended to cross it had been destroyed, he immediately ordered pontoons and bridging material, but neither the pontoons nor the 270 draft horses required to pull them from the Potomac were ready in time. The weather turned bad—hardly surprisingly, since it was now late fall—the roads became muddy, and the pontoons were heavy. Hard as the horses strained, progress was slow; nor would they escape attention. Burnside’s intention to cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg was quickly made known to Lee, who was never one to move slowly. The pontoons and all the bridging material that accompanied them did not arrive in Falmouth on the north side of the Rappahannock until almost a week after the advance elements of Burnside’s army had reached it. This meant there was ample time for Lee to get Longstreet’s corps into position, and for Jackson, who been advancing from Winchester by forced marches of over twenty miles a day, to reach there. Burnside lacked the ability to change his plan and seek another place to cross the river—or perhaps he lacked the moral courage required for high command.

  What he should have done was to attack Jackson with his full force before Jackson could join Lee, then take on Longstreet; but Burnside’s eye, like McClellan’s, was fixed on Richmond, not on Lee’s army—a huge mistake. No doubt Burnside was also concerned about how further delay would be greeted in Washington; in any case, despite his own doubts about what he was doing and despite the warnings of his generals, he was now committed to an opposed river crossing on improvised bridges against an enemy holding the high ground on the opposite bank, and had given Lee enough time to concentrate the entire Army of Northern Virginia against him there. It would be difficult to find a more a
more perilous strategic decision in the annals of military history.

  At first Lee seems to have hesitated to believe that Burnside’s move toward Fredericksburg was the real attack—he thought it might merely be a diversion for an attack against Jackson toward the Valley, but the sheer weight of numbers (and the lumbering train of pontoons), in addition to the frequent reports from Confederate spies along Burnside’s line of march, finally convinced Lee that the improbable was true. He immediately moved his headquarters from Culpeper to Fredericksburg to examine the terrain, and saw at once that despite appearances it was not an ideal place to defend. The town, one of the most graceful and historic in Virginia, would be exposed to artillery fire from the northern bank of the Rappahannock, where Stafford Heights offered an ideal place for Federal batteries. It was estimated that Burnside had almost 400 guns, which in some places would be as close as 500 yards, and which would sweep the narrow area between the southern bank of the river, the town, and the higher ground behind Fredericksburg. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to protect Fredericksburg or to prevent Burnside’s troops from crossing the river under the cover of his formidable artillery. What is more, Burnside had nearly 120,000 men, while Lee would have fewer than 80,000 even if Jackson joined him (this would be the largest total number of men engaged in any battle of the Civil War).

  20. Position of the major units of the Army of Northern Virginia at the opening of the battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862.

  {Robert E. Lee, Volumes 1, 2, and 3, by Douglas Southall Freeman, copyright © 1934, 1935, by Charles Scribner’s Sons, copyright renewed 1962, 1963, by Inez Godden Freeman. All rights reserved.}

  Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862

  When Lee arrived at Fredericksburg on November 20 in a pouring rainstorm he could see the encampments of Burnside’s army on Stafford Heights, a few hundred yards away across the river. Any doubts he may have harbored about Burnside’s intentions were quickly answered by the quantity of tents, wagon trains, guns, and smoky campfires on the other side of the Rappahannock. A bend in the river placed Fredericksburg in a salient at the center of a kind of natural bowl, exposing it to fire from the north and the east; and even though by now Lee was sure where Burnside was going, he had no way as yet of determining at what points Burnside would try to bridge the river. When Longstreet’s corps had arrived on November 25 Lee placed it on the high ground directly behind Fredericksburg. When Jackson arrived on November 29, Lee placed him on Longstreet’s right, on high ground overlooking a comparatively flat stretch to the river, between 2,000 and 3,000 yards away. It may be that Lee was trying to spare the town of Fredericksburg, where George Washington had spent part of his boyhood, and which Lee himself had known as a child. He placed Jackson to the south of the town, thinking that this was the most likely place for the Federals to bridge the river, since it narrows considerably there. As for Burnside, he failed to attempt any adequate reconnaissance of Lee’s positions, relying solely on two hot-air balloons he had brought along, even though dense brush and woods screened much of the Confederate army.

  Had Burnside crossed the river upstream while Jackson was still spread out on the move, the campaign might have had a very different outcome, but he had a kind of elephantine inability to alter a plan once he had made it. Despite Lincoln’s doubts—reinforced by a visit from Halleck, the general in chief—Burnside was adamantly determined to proceed with his plan. Inflexibility was his worst weakness, perhaps because he hoped it would look to others like self-assurance and strength.

  As the first elements of his army were in place, Burnside’s progress slowed. His pontoons lumbered on toward the Rappahannock, but the only significant move from the northern side of the river, apart from a few demonstrations, was a preemptory demand on November 21 from Major General Edwin V. Sumner—Burnside had divided his army into three “Grand Divisions,” each consisting of two corps, and Sumner commanded the right Grand Division immediately opposite Fredericksburg—for the immediate surrender of the town, failing which he would commence bombarding it with his long-range artillery at 9 a.m. the next day. When the mayor of Fredericksburg passed this message on to Lee, he expressed astonishment. The deliberate shelling of civilians was not yet the widely accepted practice it became after 1870–1871, when the Germans besieged and shelled Paris mercilessly; but the threat does not appear to have stirred in Lee the anger he had felt toward General Pope, perhaps because Sumner had forwarded his demand for surrender to the mayor with every possible military civility, under a flag of truce. Anxious to prevent the slaughter of the civilian population, Lee told the mayor that he would not occupy the town or make use of its “manufactories” if the Federals agreed to do the same. Surprisingly, Sumner agreed not to begin shelling the town the next morning, but Lee drew the correct conclusion that Fredericksburg would be impossible to protect once fighting began in earnest, and advised the civilian population to evacuate the town.

  Another of Lee’s concerns was the coming of winter—his army was in no way prepared for a winter campaign. It was already snowing on November 29, when Jackson arrived ahead of his army, and at least 2,000 or 3,000 men in Lee’s army still had no shoes,* let alone overcoats or blankets. Giving up Fredericksburg, where he could have sheltered his troops, was an act of humanity toward the inhabitants, but it increased the misery of the troops—and of course the number of his sick.

  As the days passed, Lee sought to improve his positions behind and on either side of the town, selecting some of the sites for his artillery himself and making sure that each of his more than 300 pieces were properly ranged in. He did not, however, try to turn Fredericksburg into a fortified camp with elaborate fieldworks, partly because the ground was becoming too frozen to make that practicable, and partly because he did not want to discourage Burnside from attacking him. Of all the places Burnside might have chosen to cross the Rappahannock, Fredericksburg gave Lee the best ground for a successful defensive battle against a larger foe. Forced to wait patiently, while his men “chopped fire wood to keep from freezing.” Lee watched as Burnside’s pontoon bridges were readied for the assault. At last, just before five o’clock in the morning on December 11, two guns were fired to signal that Federal engineers were beginning to place the pontoons in the water, to build two bridges immediately opposite the town. A third was being built about a mile south of Fredericksburg, where Deep Run Creek empties into the river. Lee could not make use of his artillery to fire on the first two bridges for fear of hitting homes along the river. He relied on sharpshooters to slow down the Federal engineers.

  Despite the early morning haze and fog rising from the river, the Union engineers showed extraordinary bravery as they carried one pontoon after another into position, then laid bridging material across them, all the time under constant, heavy, accurate musket fire. When men fell, they were quickly replaced. Inexorably the bridges drew nearer and nearer to the Confederate bank. When the Federal artillery began to fire on the town to suppress Lee’s musket fire, he gave vent to a rare outburst at the consequent civilian casualties: “These people delight to destroy the weak and those who can make no defense; it just suits them!”

  By early afternoon, dismayed at the slow progress of the bridge builders, Burnside used some of his pontoons to row infantry across the river and form a bridgehead. By nightfall the two pontoon bridges into the town and a double span of pontoon bridges at Deep Run had been completed; Burnside’s army began streaming across in force; and Fredericksburg was quickly taken, despite brisk firefights in its narrow streets. Whatever one thinks of Burnside as a general—and in most histories of the Civil War he occupies one of the lowest places among Union commanders—the courage and professional skill of his engineers are beyond question.

  On the morning of December 12 heavy fog concealed the Union army from the Confederates, but “up the hillside drifted the echo of phantom voices, the roll of drums, snatches of bugle calls and, ere long, the music of bands in well remembered tunes,” remindin
g the Confederates of their presence as the bulk of the Federal army deployed in full strength unseen in the mist. By that evening 113,000 Federal troops faced just over 78,000* Confederates along a six-mile line, stretching from the bend in the Rappahannock above Fredericksburg, on the Union far right, to Smithfield on the far left, a narrow salient that included the town and was held by two of Burnside’s Grand Divisions, as well as part of the third. It was a powerful force, but the position was shallow, at no point more than 1,000 yards deep, and at its back was the river.

  The morning of December 13 began with dense fog through which could be heard the eerie sound of bands playing martial music and drumming—clearly an attack was intended. At nine o’clock in the morning the fog lifted, revealing Burnside’s army in “martial array,” line after line of infantry, their flags streaming in the cold breeze and their swords, buttons, and bayonets reflecting the sun—as impressive a sight as any army has ever presented, the more so given the threadbare appearance of the Confederates. Colonel Long, watching beside Lee, caught the glory of that moment, as he glimpsed the long blue lines stretching “from the city down the river as far as the eye could reach. All,” he wrote, “was bustle and animation in the ranks of the great blue lines. The bright muskets of the men glistened in the sunlight, and countless flags with the stars and stripes floated with the breeze and marked the direction as the troops were maneuvered into line-of-battle formation to the sound of soul-stirring music. No doubt every heart of that mighty host beat high with hope in anticipation of the impending struggle.” To Lee, and to every senior Confederate officer present, it was a moment of awe—this, after all, was their army, the army that they had attended West Point to serve in, and whose uniform they had worn in Mexico or on the frontier, lined up in perfect formation with a precision that would have satisfied the most demanding of drill sergeants, and about to march straight toward them over open ground, in the face of 306 Confederate cannons, which had been carefully sited, dug in, and ranged to receive them. It can only have been with mixed emotions that Lee watched them dress their lines for an attack he knew must fail.