Lee's Lieutenants

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  It scarcely seemed possible that the strong ground held by McLaws would be assaulted, but its defense represented the type of work at which Lafayette McLaws shone. He prepared pits for his batteries and strengthened some parts of his front with abatis and fire trenches. At the foot of the heights was a sunken road, protected by a stone wall, that paralleled his front. McLaws was not content with this. He had a ditch dug on the lower side of the road, and the dirt banked against the front of the wall—an ideal trench for point-blank fire. This was to be Cobb’s position.13

  Longstreet gave to McLaws, also, the more difficult task of guarding Fredericksburg’s riverfront. From their side of the Rappahannock the Unionists could employ their overpowering artillery to keep the Confederate batteries at a distance and to cover their own advance. The only defense was posting infantrymen in the houses and behind any cover they could find next to the river. This assignment was given the fine Mississippi veterans of William Barksdale. They had been much diminished in number by the hard fighting of the summer, but in valor they were worthy of their stout-hearted commander. Barksdale had displayed, at Malvern Hill, what Lee styled the “highest qualities of the soldier.”14 Lesser opportunities had not made him appear smaller.

  On the evening of December 10, observing stir and movement on the Federal side of the Rappahannock, Longstreet concluded that Burnside’s men were about to cross the river. Old Pete shared the general opinion that nothing could keep the Federals from crossing under the cover of their superior artillery, but, as a matter of course, he wished to meet the attempt boldly, and harass and delay it to the last moment of prudence. In Fredericksburg, along the riverfront and downstream as far as a quarter of a mile below the mouth of Deep Run, Barksdale’s 17th and 18th Mississippi were on the qui vive. Barksdale doubled his pickets, and he himself rode ceaselessly along his front of a mile and a half. In the blackness nothing could be seen, but sound carried clearly. By 4:00 A.M. Barksdale was satisfied that the Union engineers were beginning to throw their pontoons at three points—one on the site of the rope ferry in the town, one near the railroad bridge, and one opposite the mouth of Deep Run.

  At 5 o’clock, at the ferry site, the excellent riflemen of the 17th Mississippi, supported by a contingent of the 8th Florida, opened on the bridge-builders. They could see nothing through the enveloping fog; their ears had to serve for their eyes. The task of holding off the enemy at the ferry landing did not prove difficult. If the bullets from the rifles of the Missis-sippians reached few Federals, they made many cautious. At last, as wintry dawn slowly dissipated darkness and thinned the fog, the defenders could calculate the distance of the closest pontoon as eighty feet from the west bank where they were hiding. Their first shots drove off the working party. The sharpshooters at the railroad bridge found it equally simple to keep the pontooniers at a distance. Opposite Deep Run the situation was not so favorable. Well-led, competent engineer troops worked steadily under a shielding and impenetrable fog. So well were the bridge-makers covered that the Confederates did not know that two bridges were being thrown.15

  To the spiteful bark of the rifles along the riverfront the Federal artillery made wrathful answer. Barksdale’s men in the town were not to be shaken by random cannonade. They hugged the ground or pulled close to stout brick walls and waited till the fire slackened. Then, as the pontooniers ran out on the bridges again to resume their work, Barksdale’s rifles mockingly picked them off. Burnside ordered all artillery within range to open on the town in the hope of compelling Barksdale to withdraw. A furious bombardment it was. It swept the streets, shattered houses, shook the very hills; but it did not drive out Barksdale’s men. They took to the cellars or found deeper ditches and at intervals they would peer out to be certain the bridge-builders had not returned to work. “Tell General Lee,” Barksdale said grimly to a messenger, “that if he wants a bridge of dead Yankees, I can furnish him with one!”16

  After the bombardment the Union bridge-builders tried again. From the eastern bank loaded bateaux of Federals put boldly out and started to row across the river. Barksdale’s men challenged the enemy as before, but this time the fire was weaker. Union batteries were beginning to search out the position of the Mississippi marksmen. Barksdale stuck stubbornly to his task, but at 4:30 P.M. he had to call his men back to Caroline Street. Ere long, as Federal infantry continued to move fast across the bridges, McLaws sent orders to evacuate the town. Doubtless Barksdale would have fought joyfully to the last soldier and the last cartridge, had not his orders been repeated. He had reluctantly to obey.

  Sketch of the battlefield of Fredericksburg, December 1862.

  The 21st Mississippi, which had not been engaged along the river, was selected by Barksdale to cover the withdrawal. At the rear of this rear regiment was a detachment under Lieutenant Lane Brandon, a graduate of the Harvard Law School. From a prisoner Brandon learned that the lead company of the 20th Massachusetts pursuing him was commanded by his chum and former classmate, Henry L. Abbott. That was enough for Brandon. Cost what it might, he would whip Abbott then and there! He halted his rear guard, turned about, and attacked the 20th Massachusetts and momentarily pressed it back. He was preparing to carry the contest back through the town when orders most peremptory were sent him to break off the fight. So mad was he, even then, to outdo his friend Abbott that he had to be put under arrest.17

  Without further loss or incident Barksdale marched through the darkness of the winter’s early night to the foot of Marye’s Heights … across a wide, deep field, a field of execution.

  3

  ON THE RIGHT AT FREDERICKSBURG

  The completion of four pontoon bridges by nightfall on December 11 led the Confederate commanders to conclude that Burnside was almost certain to attack somewhere near Fredericksburg. He scarcely could have afforded to put down that many pontoons as a ruse to hold the Confederates at the town while he crossed at a remote point on the Rappahannock. The hour of battle must be near. Jackson at Guiney’s Station was advised of the situation; Powell Hill was ordered to move at dawn and take the position previously held by Longstreet’s right division. D. H. Hill and Early, watching the lower crossings, were left where they were until the probability of an attack at Fredericksburg became a certainty.

  On the morning of the twelfth the fog was widespread, shifting and uneven. Troops in large numbers evidently had crossed and bivouacked both in Fredericksburg and near the bridges opposite Deep Run. As the morning wore on, with no news of Federal activity elsewhere on the Rappahannock, the question became that of where, on the Fredericksburg front, Burnside would concentrate his attack.18

  At first Longstreet thought the attack would be against Jackson on the right, but when he saw how heavily the Federals were massing in Fredericksburg, he concluded that the main assault would be against his right and the left of Jackson. Old Pete accordingly summoned Ransom’s division from reserve and put it with the left units of McLaws’s division to guard Marye’s Heights. The previous night, most of Tom Cobb’s brigade had been moved down to the sunken road under the heights to relieve Barksdale’s tired men. On Cobb’s left, Ransom placed the 24th North Carolina of his own brigade. John R. Cooke’s great regiment, the 27th, was placed near the crest.19

  Some time about noon, Jackson dispatched orders for Early and D. H. Hill to join him. No concern did he express that the distance they had to cover—eighteen to twenty-two miles—was too long a march for a December night. Other preparations Old Jack completed promptly and with his habitual care for detail and discipline. In particular he instructed his provost marshal to prevent all straggling of the sort that had so dangerously weakened the army in the Maryland operations. His orders were explicit: The provost marshal guard was to shoot, first, all stragglers who refused to go to the front; and, second, all soldiers who were said by two witnesses to be straggling for the second time. Instructions did not specify whether the straggler was to be shot in the head or in the heel.20

  On the arrival at the f
ront of Taliaferro, who had recovered from his wound and temporarily had charge of Jackson#8217;s old division, that veteran command had an unusual privilege. All too often, as its thinned ranks showed, the division had been in the “very front of battle.” Now it was placed behind A. P. Hill, out of range of adventuresome minié balls—sure evidence that Lee, for once, had ample reserves. What a contrast to that dreadful September day at Sharpsburg, not three months previously!

  One subject only was there for debate while the Confederates filed into position on the ridge: Was that strong position weakened by the bit of woodland that projected toward the river from the line of A. P. Hill? The Light Division’s line ran northwestward from Hamilton’s Crossing one and a half miles on a wood-covered ridge. About 1,300 yards from Hamilton’s was a boggy little ravine on the border of which was a narrow triangle of woods. To avoid this bad ground the nearest units had been placed on either side. Lane’s brigade had its right about 150 yards from the left of the projecting triangle. Archer’s brigade was close to the right of the tangled, sodden woods. That is to say, about 500 or 600 yards of front, between Archer’s left and Lane’s right, was not occupied by troops. Was it safe to leave so wide a gap? With the batteries placed as they were, Powell Hill apparently thought the gap would offer no danger, especially with Gregg stationed on higher ground at the rear of the boggy wood. Jackson probably heard nothing on the twelfth about the gap in his corps front, though he rode the length of the line.21

  The chill of that windy night of December 12 was relieved, for all save the pickets, by hundreds of campfires. Jube Early and Harvey Hill were on the march up the Rappahannock. Taliaferro had his men in the assigned reserve position behind Powell Hill. To the left of Hill, the division of Hood was moved nearer. Hood’s instructions from Longstreet were to cooperate with Hill or with any other of Jackson’s troops. Confidence was complete. Why not? The position was stronger than any the Army of Northern Virginia ever had occupied. Reserves would be ample. Artillery would take its toll when those tens of thousands who crowded the fields and the town undertook to assault the ridge … if they were foolish enough to do so.

  Much the worst of the day’s happenings had been in Fredericksburg itself, where numerous noncombatants had remained throughout the bombardment. The plundering to which they were subjected was described at the time by a Federal major, Francis E. Pierce: “Great three-story houses furnished magnificently were broken into and their contents scattered over the floors and trampled on by the muddy feet of the soldiers…. Finest cut glass ware goblets were hurled at nice plate glass windows, … rosewood pianos piled in the street and burned or soldiers would get on top of them and kick the key-board and internal machinery all to pieces…. The soldiers seemed to delight in destroying everything.”22 Well it was, perhaps, that the gray men on the gray hills behind Fredericksburg knew nothing of this. Had they been aware of the plundering and purposeless destruction, the battle of December 13 might have been marked by hot vindictiveness and not by cold, defiant repulse.

  The thirteenth of December dawned cold. Spotsylvania’s hills were damp with the fog that covered the river valley. At 7:17 the sun rose red and fiery behind the Federal left and promised from a cloudless sky to drive away the moisture. “Peter” Longstreet was in his battle mood—brusque but hearty, alert but perfectly composed, eager for a new adventure. Burn-side’s chief assault, he told Hood and Pickett, would be south of them, on Jackson’s front. Their two divisions must be prepared to deliver a counterattack on the Federal flank should Jackson’s line be broken. He expected to be assailed farther north, near his left center, where he felt he was strong enough to beat off the enemy without calling on Pickett or Hood. In conversation with Porter Alexander, who was about to fight his first battle as commander of a battalion of First Corps artillery, young Alexander told him with pride, of the ground in front of Marye’s Heights, “General, we cover that ground now so well that we comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it!” That pleased Longstreet, and sent him in high humor to the commanding eminence near the center of the line, where General Lee had established field headquarters.23

  Thither Jackson was making his way. He had risen early and for reasons known to himself only, decided that he would wear that day the uniform coat Jeb Stuart had given him in October—the coat of resplendent gold braid—as well as the hat Hotchkiss had presented him on the march to Harper’s Ferry. Thus glorified, Old Jack was dazzling to the eye if manifestly embarrassed. The remarks of his men did not lessen his discomfort. A private shouted: “Come here, boys! Stonewall has drawed his bounty and has bought himself some new clothes!” Everywhere along the line there was the same astonishment over Jackson’s appearance. On his arrival at the hill—from that hour “Lee’s Hill”—Jackson created no less of a sensation. Lee, of course, made no remark about the unwonted smartness of Jackson’s appearance; Longstreet trained his eye but reserved his verbal fire; Jeb Stuart was delighted Jackson was using on so great a day a present from affectionate hands.24

  When conversation turned to the battle that soon would begin, Jackson was in zealous advocacy of immediate attack. If the Confederates assailed the blue infantry while the fog hung low, the Union artillery would be useless. Stuart seconded his hero’s proposal, but Lee shook his head. The odds were too great, he said. It was the course of wisdom to receive the attack, to reduce the odds, to wear down the enemy, and then to take the offensive. Jackson acquiesced in the decision of the commanding general, as he always did, heartily and without reservation, but he pondered the move he should make when the enemy’s attack on his front collapsed. Would there be opportunity for a counterstroke? He would make ready.

  By 10 o’clock, with a mystic majesty that made eyes brighten and cheeks flush, the scene visible from Lee’s Hill began to change. Down, down the fog sank until the church steeples of the little town could be distinguished, then the mustered lines of blue, the ambulances, the ordnance wagons, the batteries. The spectacle stirred Longstreet. “Jackson, what are you going to do with all those people over there?” he inquired. Jackson doubtless answered in the spirit of his deepest impulse as a soldier, “Sir, we will give them the bayonet!”25

  Back on the front with his corps, Jackson was greeted with a swelling Federal fire and every evidence of a brewing infantry attack. Von Borcke voiced some anxiety over the near approach of the unchallenged Federals. Jackson was more than unconcerned. He was pleased. “Major, my men sometimes fail to take a position, but to defend one, never! I am glad the Yankees are coming!” A few minutes later, he directed that the horse artillery open against the Federal left flank, which he believed he could rake.26

  The duel that followed on the Confederate right was the most dramatic of all those in which John Pelham had been engaged. Boldly he advanced his guns—a Blakely rifle and a 12-pounder Napoleon—beyond the infantry line and opened with solid shot on a heavy column moving almost at right angles to his position. Furious Federal guns speedily were turned on him. A blast put his obstreperous Blakely out of action. Four batteries were soon trying to hit his solitary Napoleon. Undaunted, Pelham gave the only answer he could, the answer of redoubled fire. Although his men were falling fast, the loss seemed justified because the whole menacing Federal line now had halted. Evidently its commander intended to advance no more until Pelham was silenced. Not until his caissons were almost empty did Pelham limber up and, amid a pursuing blaze of shells, drive back to Hamilton’s Crossing. “It is glorious to see such courage in one so young!” exclaimed an admiring General Lee.27

  The Federal batteries now opened violently on the hill where fourteen of A. P. Hill’s guns were hidden as well as the ground permitted. Jackson watched without anxiety. He believed Hill’s artillery would be able to beat off the infantry who evidently were about to resume their advance. Until the proper minute arrived, all the Confederate batteries were to remain inactive. For close to an hour the Southern gunners hugged the cold ear
th and passively watched the shells burst over and around them.

  At the end of that time, the Federals apparently concluded that the batteries on the hill had been destroyed and the position could be stormed. Those long, awe-inspiring blue ranks began to move. Onward, straight for the ridge, came thousands of Federals across the open fields. No challenge met them. Within 1,000 yards they came; 900 it was; 800 yards. Then a hoarsely shouted order was repeated by each gray battery commander. Lanyards were pulled; shells went screaming toward the blue line. The startled Federal infantry hesitated a moment but steadfastly pushed on again. Once more and still once more the artillery of Hill and Stuart tore the ranks. There was a wavering, a halt, then a slow recoil.

  The blue soldiers fell back, but merely beyond effective range. Jackson and Stuart watched the enemy mend his broken lines and perfect his formation. About 1:00 P.M. across the fields the Federals advanced again in three long, massive lines. The whole front of A. P. Hill was to be assailed. On the neck of woodland—the woods that represented part of the gap in the lines of the Light Division—the first blow would fall. For a few minutes it looked as if the fire of Hill’s divisional artillery would drive back the Federals again. The lines slowed, hesitated, and retired ever so little. Then instead of turning back, the Union troops pushed more furiously forward. Northern blood was up. The front line entered the apex of the triangle of boggy woods. Lane’s men were at grips with the enemy.28

  A rise of ground here served to deflect the Federal attack toward Lane’s right and directly into the gap between him and Archer. Before any precautions could be taken, the Federals were crashing their way through the wood and assailing the two regiments on Lane’s right and the two on Archer’s left. In his first hour of combat as a general officer, Lane was having a test that might have shaken steel nerves. The sick Archer had a well man’s task and more. As the defenders on both sides of the gap fought stubbornly, both Lane and Archer sent back word that they were hard-pressed. The Federals pressed into Lane’s weakened front and threatened envelopment. His North Carolinians had to give ground.