Both General Jackson, dressed up for once in a spanking new uniform and gold-braided cap, and General Stuart urged Lee to seize the moment and attack the Federal lines, but Lee would not. He had placed his army on higher ground, its artillery and its reserves concealed by woods, and Burnside had done just what Lee had anticipated. Lee would let the Federals charge him and wear them down. The moment the fog began to lift it was clear that they would open their attack on his right, which was held by Jackson’s corps. As Lee and his two senior generals stood watching the Federal army emerge from the mist, the disparity between their numbers and those of the Confederates was so startling that Longstreet, who always enjoyed pulling Jackson’s leg, asked him what he was going to do with “all those people over there?” Without smiling, Jackson mounted and replied sternly, “Sir, we will give them the bayonet.”
At almost that moment the sun came out, “as if the ready war god rang up the curtain on the scene set for slaughter, and against the vast backdrop of the gun-studded hills of Stafford, the whole stage was disclosed, from the upper fringe of Fredericksburg’s streets to the distant gray meadows in front of Hamilton’s Crossing.” There was something deeply theatrical about that moment. It was not surprising. Again and again the Civil War produced scenes of grandeur that imprinted themselves on the minds of countless men on both sides of the conflict.
Lee still would not move. His calm was such that as the enemy formed up before him, he was still dictating letters, including a brief refusal to a singularly poorly timed request from the adjutant general in Richmond to “reinforce Wilmington from this army.” Lee ended with a stern recommendation: “The people [of Wilmington] must turn out to defend their homes, or they will be taken from them,” perhaps a reflection of his implacable, determined mood at the sight of the masses of Federal troops before him.
Lee inadvertently opened the battle at 10:30 a.m. by ordering his batteries on Saint Marye’s Heights, “Test the ranges on the left.” Thinking that these trial shots were the signal for a Confederate barrage, the Federal batteries responded from across the river. As the smoke drifted from the Confederate guns, Major General William Franklin’s Union Grand Division began its advance on the Confederate right, where Jackson’s army waited on the wooded slopes of Prospect Hill. Burnside was so poorly informed that he still assumed Jackson had not yet reached Lee, and that he himself was attacking only half of Lee’s army. Even so, numbers tell. Franklin’s Grand Division at first punched a hole in Jackson’s line, then fought its way savagely into the woods at the base of Prospect Hill. On Lee’s left Sumner’s Grand Division advanced from the streets of Fredericksburg to the base of Saint Marye’s Heights, each attack followed by a counterattack. Jackson was barely able to hold his positions, then was halted as he counterattacked by heavy artillery fire from across the river.
On the left an even more dramatic and sanguinary scene was being enacted. Halfway up the gentle slope of Marye’s Heights above the town was a partly sunken road, with a thick stone “retaining wall” overlooking the town. No one could have chosen a harder place to attack than Telegraph Road, but that did not stop Burnside, who ordered both Sumner’s and Hooker’s Grand Divisions, from launching attack after attack there against Longstreet’s troops despite massive artillery fire. As lines of Union infantrymen climbed the slope the Confederates shot them down like ducks in a shooting gallery. It was one of the most senseless slaughters in a war that was full of doomed assaults and hopeless attacks. Each time Burnside’s men advanced over the bodies of their own dead and wounded, they were shot down.
But Lee looked with growing anxiety on his right, where successive Federal charges were driving Jackson’s lines back, and where he could see Confederate prisoners were being taken.
Suddenly an artillery piece near him blew up. It left him unhurt, and then, from a great distance, he heard over the constant roar of cannon and musket fire the unmistakable sound of the rebel yell. Jackson’s corps were counterattacking. Turning toward Longstreet, Lee said, “It is well that war is so terrible—we should grow too fond of it!”
This famous quote is usually attributed to Lee’s admiration at the disciplined Federal ranks advancing over a field strewn with the bodies of those who had gone before them. Actually Lee said it when he saw A. P. Hill’s ragged “butternut”* troops at Deep Run as they emerged from the woods to counterattack a superior number of Federal troops.
The Federal threat to the Confederate right had been blunted at a terrible cost, but the waves of attacks on Saint Marye’s Heights continued unabated, prompting Lee to say to Longstreet, “General, they are massing very heavily, and will break your line, I am afraid.” Longstreet replied: “General, if you put every man now on the other side of the Potomac in that field to approach me over the same line, and give me plenty of ammunition, I will kill them all before they reach my line. Look to your right; you are in some danger there, but not on my line.”
The futile Federal charges on the right slowly died down into an “artillery duel,” which Jackson seemed to be winning. On the right, though, the intensity of the attacks on the sunken road on Saint Marye’s Heights increased. Taking advantage of a moment’s pause in the battle. Burnside redoubled his attempt to take the road, only to be driven back. Throughout the afternoon, and on into dark, the fight on the Confederate left continued, as Burnside continued to throw forward brigade after brigade, stubbornly defying military wisdom by reinforcing failure. “A series of braver, more desperate charges than those hurled against the troops in the sunken road was never known,” wrote the normally reticent Longstreet, “and the piles and cross-piles of dead marked a field such as I never saw before or since.”
For the wounded, it was a night of horror, as the temperature dropped and men froze to death in grotesque postures. Although Lee might have relished his victory, it was a night of troubling decisions. He was convinced, as nearly all of his generals were, that Burnside would renew the attack in the morning, probably trying to outflank the Confederate lines rather than attempting another direct assault. Lee worried that his artillery ammunition might be exhausted. He finally reported to the Confederate secretary of war, “About 9 a.m. the enemy attacked our right, and as the fog lifted the battle ran from right to left; raged until 6 p.m.; but thanks to Almighty God, the day closed [with attacks] repulsed along our whole front. Our troops behaved admirably, but, as usual, we have to mourn the loss of many brave men. I expect the battle to be renewed at daylight. Please send to the President.”
At dawn the next day, with the battlefield again obscured by heavy morning fog, Lee rode out to urge his men to dig in. But when the sun finally broke through, revealing the ghastly field of dead and wounded, no attack came. He realized that the streets of Fredericksburg had been sealed off with makeshift barricades as if Burnside was preparing to make a desperate last stand there. Meanwhile the long lines of troops on the Confederate right remained motionless, their flags furled as if in mourning. Still the Union divisions were silent, but many noticed that the Union dead were lying “naked and discolored,” their clothes having been stripped off by Confederate soldiers in the dark. Neither Lee nor even the venturesome Jackson contemplated a Confederate attack. Stuart’s Prussian aide, Major Heros von Borcke however, was critical of this decision. “Our commander-in-chief,” Von Borcke wrote, “still objected to a forward movement, for which, in my judgment, the golden opportunity had now passed, had he been inclined to favor it. . . . Not one of our Generals was aware of the magnitude of the victory we had gained, of the injury we had inflicted upon the enemy, and of the degree of demoralization in the hostile army.” Even after a victory, the problems of the Army of the Northern Virginia repeated themselves. Lee had no means to pursue the enemy. Food supplies, forage, and ammunition were running low; the men were cold, hungry, and exhausted. Once again Lee had to be content with a victory of numbers: 12,653 Federal casualties against 5,309 Confederate. By any definition it was a great victory, but not one that dispersed t
he beaten foe. The hapless Burnside asked for and received a truce to bury his dead and collect those of his wounded who had survived. He then withdrew his army across the Rappahannock, pontoons and all, and placed it safely out of Lee’s reach.
The Confederate victory at Fredericksburg deeply troubled the North. The Governor of Pennsylvania told President Lincoln, “It was not a battle, it was butchery.” On being told the news Lincoln wrote, “If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it.” Still, in the end battles must be judged by the effect they have on history, and Fredericksburg, though it demonstrated Lee’s ability to choose where and when to fight, changed nothing. The Federal Army of the Potomac was still in Virginia, on the north bank of the Rappahannock, to be sure, but Lee had not driven it out, no foreign government had been moved by his victory to recognize the Confederacy, nor was Lincoln forced to open negotiations for the Confederacy’s independence. Both armies soon took up winter quarters to lick their wounds. Major Von Borcke was perfectly right: the “golden opportunity” for a victory like that of Washington at Yorktown had eluded him. Lee was acclaimed universally in the South, and even the North respected his abilities. Burnside, on the other hand, was replaced by “Fighting Joe” Hooker, who was possibly an even more incompetent general, and certainly a less amiable personality.
The onset of winter did not allow Lee much rest. His men did their best to construct makeshift shelters while Lee continued to live in a tent, even though a vacant house was available nearby. His headquarters, according to his youngest son, Robert, recently promoted from artilleryman to a lieutenant on the staff of his brother Rooney, “were very unpretentious, consisting of three or four ‘wall-tents’ and several more common ones, pitched on the edge of an old pine field, near a group of forest trees from which he drew his supply of fire-wood.”
Robert goes on to say that his father’s quarters were “rather dismal,” but Lee was determined to share his men’s discomfort. The short supplies threatened Lee’s army with starvation, and reduced the horses to a heartbreaking condition—a matter of great concern since it threatened to cripple both Lee’s cavalry and his artillery.* Despite constant urging from Lee, the Confederate government was unable to organize or maintain supplies of food and forage. Douglas Southall Freeman writes that “Lee’s appeals and warnings alike failed to do more than to keep the army alive.” The men were lucky indeed if they received “one fourth pound of bacon, 18 ounces of flour, 10 pounds of rice to each 100 men every third day, with some few peas and a small amount of dried fruit occasionally as they can be obtained.” The result was that most of the Confederate army suffered from scurvy, dysentery, frostbite, and exhaustion, while many of the horses died of starvation and cold. Major-General Fuller is not wrong in accusing Lee of failing to press his case hard enough: “his pleadings are so tactful that they are disregarded. He never thunders for them.” It is true that Lee relied too much on his troops’ indomitable spirit than on mundane details of supply. He also shrank from an all-out confrontation with President Davis and the Confederate Congress, who remained lax on this issue.
Fredericksburg is only sixty miles from Richmond, and none of Lee’s soldiers would have begrudged him a few days to relax with his family. But Lee also took no leave, because his men got none. This was a mistake, as he needed rest to command effectively. He wrote to his daughter Mildred on Christmas day, “I cannot tell you how I long to see you when a little quiet occurs. My thoughts revert to you, your sisters, and your mother; my heart aches for our reunion. Your brothers I see occasionally. This morning Fitzhugh rode by with his young aide-de-camp [Rob] at the head of his brigade, on his way up the Rappahannock.”
On the same day he wrote to Mary, “But what a cruel thing is war, to separate and destroy families, and mar the purest joy and happiness God has granted us in this world,” and added: “My heart bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men.” Lee’s simplicity and sincerity shine through here—as in his decision at this point to proceed with the instructions in his father-in-law’s will, and have delivered to all of the Custis slaves “their manumission papers,” freeing them as Mr. Custis had wanted. “As regards the liberation of the people, I wish to progress in it as far as I can,” he wrote. “I hope they will all do well and behave themselves. I should like, if I could, to attend to their wants and see them placed to best advantage. But that is impossible. All that choose can leave the state before the war closes . . . [These people] are entitled to their freedom and I wish to give it to them.” Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had in principle freed all slaves in the Confederate states on January 1, 1863, but in practice slavery would continue in those states until the end of the war (except as portions of them were occupied by the Union Army), and the proclamation had no effect on the resolve of both Lees to carry out as exactly as possible the terms of Mr. Custis’s will regarding his slaves.
Perhaps the only positive note during the winter was that the War Department followed Lee’s sensible suggestion to melt down some of the army’s older bronze cannons to make 12-pounder Napoleons, the guns Lee preferred. They would reduce the number of different gun calibers and simplify manufacture.
Meanwhile the weather became crueler and harsher every day. “[The snow] was nearly up to my knees as I stepped out this morning,” Lee wrote to Mary, “and our poor horses were enveloped. We have dug them out, and opened our avenues a little, but it will be terrible and the roads impassible. I fear our short rations for man and horse will have to be curtailed.” Even when the War Department managed to produce a few animals to feed the men, they were so thin by the time they arrived that Lee could not have them slaughtered. No American army had suffered like this since George Washington’s had wintered at Valley Forge.
Lee’s own health, usually so robust, failed for a time. He was sleeping poorly, and a persistent throat infection worsened into what was thought to be pericarditis, for which treatment then consisted of rest and painting the chest with iodine. The diagnosis was wrong; Lee was probably suffering from the onset of heart disease, arteriosclerosis, angina, or even a small heart attack. The same symptoms—chest pain, pain in the left arm, and shortness of breath—recurred just before Gettysburg. Even in the winter of 1862 his condition was serious enough that he was persuaded to move out of his tent into a nearby house. Surrounded by strangers, however kind, he yearned for the privacy of his tent. He believed that getting out in the fresh air on Traveller would be better for him than any medicine and complained of “the doctors tapping me all over like an old steam boiler before condemning it.” Some historians, including Emory M. Thomas, speculated that Lee may have experienced the first signs of heart trouble as early as his last tour in Texas, but few have considered what effect arteriosclerosis might have on his judgment over the next three years.
Great commanders are usually comparatively young men, while Lee was already fifty-five. He was almost certainly drawing on physical reserves he did not possess. At his age, spending the winter in a tent, with the survival of the Confederacy resting on his shoulders, must have subjected him to enormous strain, however carefully he concealed it.
Much of what happened during the last two years of the war makes more sense if one supposes that Lee was approaching what was then thought of as old age with advanced cardiovascular problems.
By the first week of April he was a little better, although still complaining of fatigue. Spring meant that he was once again facing the renewal of the war, although “Fighting Joe” Hooker gave Lee few clues to what he intended to do. Lee thought the Union commander might attempt to draw him farther up the Rappahannock, so the Federals could strike at Richmond. Or Hooker might make another attempt to cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg or farther upstream. He might even be planning to move his army south of the James River by sea and try to take Richmond from the same direction as McClellan. Lee’s own hope was to cross the Potomac and try to reach Pennsylvania before Hooker could stop him—a repetition of his last campaign, but wi
thout the costly checkmate at Sharpsburg. Apart from Federal cavalry patrols, which suggested that Hooker was asking himself the same questions, the northern army kept several observation balloons in the air.
In the meantime Longstreet and most of his men were foraging in North Carolina for food for the men and their horses. Once Longstreet rejoined him, Lee would have about 60,000 men to Hooker’s 138,000, not enough to form a long defensive line, or to prevent the Union Army from crossing the Rappahannock. In any case, Lee would have to wait for Hooker to make the first move.
On April 29 Lee woke up to the sound of distant cannon fire. One of Stuart’s aides came up to say that Federal troops were crossing the Rappahannock below Fredericksburg “in force,” while more Federal troops were marching up the northern bank of the river. Although Hooker was approaching Fredericksburg from a new direction, the Battle of Chancellorsville was in fact an attempt to refight the Battle of Fredericksburg by approaching from the west as well as crossing the Rappahannock. Nothing startling was added to Burnside’s plan except for a cavalry sweep intended to cut Lee off from Richmond. Lee quickly realized that Hooker’s plan was to hold the Confederates at Fredericksburg while crossing the Rapidan and the Rappahannock rivers where there were few of Lee’s troops.
21. The approach to Chancellorsville.
Clouds of Glory Page 61