Historic Fredericksburg: The Story of an Old Town. Goolrick John Tackett
fearful picture of war was Fredericksburg in those December days from the eleventh to the thirteenth.
To the citizens of Fredericksburg, those days meant bankruptcy, for their slaves walked away, their stores and churches were battered, their silverware stolen, their homes despoiled and their clothing worn or thrown away. Wealthy men were to walk back a few days later to their home town as paupers; women and children were to come back to hunger and discomfort in bleak winter weather; and all this was the result of what General Lee said was an entirely “unnecessary” bombardment and of days of pillage, which no earnest attempt to stop was made. Fredericksburg was the blackest spot on Burnside’s none too effulgent reputation.
From the army, from Southern cities and from individuals money for relief came liberally, and in all nearly $170,000. was contributed to aid in feeding, clothing and making habitable homes for the unfortunate town’s people. A good many carloads of food came, too, but the whole barely relieved the worst misery, for the $170,000. was Confederate money, with its purchasing power at low mark.
The First Battle
Following the shelling of Fredericksburg, on December 11th, the Union army began to cross on pontoons. On the 12th of December, under cover of the guns and of fog, almost the whole Union army crossed on three pontoons, one near the foot of Hawk street, another just above the car bridge, and one at Deep Run. On the morning of December 13th, General Burnside’s army was drawn up in a line of battle from opposite Falmouth to Deep Run. It was, say they who saw the vast army with artillery and cavalry advanced, banners flying and the bayonets of their infantry hosts gleaming as the fog lifted, one of the most imposing sights of the war.
General Burnside actually had in line and fought during the day, according to his report, 100,000 effective men.
General Lee had 57,000 effectives, ranged along the hills from Taylor, past Snowden, past Marye’s Heights, past Hazel Run and on to Hamilton’s Crossing.
There were preliminary skirminishes of cavalry, light artillery and infantry. The enemy tried to “feel” General Lee’s lines.
Then, about 10 o’clock, they advanced against the hills near Hamilton’s Crossing, where Jackson’s Corps was posted, in a terrific charge across a broad plateau between the river and the hills to within a quarter of a mile of the Confederate position, where they broke under terrific artillery and musketry fire. At one o’clock 55,000 men, the whole of Franklin’s and Hooker’s Grand Divisions advanced again in the mightiest single charge of the Civil War. Stuart and Pelham (he earned that day from Lee the title of “The Gallant Pelham”) raked them with light artillery, but nevertheless they forced a wedge through Jackson’s lines and had won the day, until Jackson’s reserves, thrown into the breach, drove them out and threw back the whole line. As dusk came on, Stuart and Pelham counter charged, advancing their guns almost to the Bowling Green road, and Jackson prepared to charge and “drive them into the river,” but was stopped by the heavy Union guns on Stafford hills.
During the fiercest part of the battle, “Stonewall” Jackson was on the hill just on the Fredericksburg side of Hamilton’s Crossing where Walker’s artillery was posted, but toward evening, fired with his hope of driving the Union forces across the river, he rode rapidly from place to place, sending out frequent orders. One of these he gave to an aide.
“Captain, go through there and if you and your horse come out alive, tell Stuart I am going to advance my whole line at sunset.” It was this charge, mentioned above, which failed.
Late that night, rising from the blankets which he shared with a Chaplain, Jackson wrote some orders. While he was doing this, an orderly came and standing at the tent flap, said, “General Gregg is dying, General, and sent me to say to you that he wrote you a letter recently in which he used expressions he is sorry for. He says he meant no disrespect by that letter and was only doing what he thought was his duty. He hopes you will forgive him.”
Without hesitation, Jackson, who was deeply stirred, answered, “Tell General Gregg I will be with him directly.”
He rode through the woods back to where the brave Georgian was dying, and day was about to break when he came back to his troops.
General Maxey Gregg, of Georgia, was killed in action here, as were a number of other gallant officers.
Jackson held the right of the Confederate lines all day with 26,000 men against 55,000. His losses were about 3,415, while Hooker and Franklin lost 4,447. Meanwhile, against Marye’s Heights, the left center of the line, almost two miles away, General Burnside sent again and again terrific infantry charges.
The hills just back of Fredericksburg are fronted by an upward sloping plane, and at the foot of that part of the hills called Marye’s Heights is a stone wall and the “Sunken Road” – as fatal here for Burnside as was the Sunken Road at Waterloo for Napoleon. On Marye’s Heights was the Washington Artillery, and a number of guns – a veritable fortress, ready, as General Pegram said, “to sweep the plans in front as close as a fine-tooth comb.” At the foot of the heights behind the stone wall were Cobb’s Georgians, Kershaw’s South Carolinians, and Ransom’s and Cobb’s North Carolinas – nine thousand riflemen, six deep, firing over the front lines’ shoulders, so that, so one officer wrote “they literally sent bullets in sheets.”
Against this impregnable place, Burnside launched charge after charge, and never did men go more bravely and certainly to death. This was simultaneous with the fighting at Hamilton’s Crossing.
Meagher’s Irish Brigade went first across the plain. Detouring from Hanover street and George street, they formed line of battle on the lowest ground, and with cedar branches waving in their hats, bravely green in memory of “the ould sod” they swept forward until the rifles behind the wall and the cannon on the hill decimated their ranks; and yet again they formed and charged, until over the whole plain lay the dead, with green cedar boughs waving idly in their hats. The Irish Brigade was practically exterminated, and three more charges by larger bodies failed, although one Northern officer fell within twenty-five yards of the wall. The day ended in the utter defeat of the Union Army, which withdrew into Fredericksburg at night.
In front of the wall 8,217 Union soldiers were killed or wounded, and in the “Sunken Road” the Confederates lost 1,962.
The total Union loss in the whole battle of Fredericksburg was 12,664 and the Confederates’ loss 5,377.
General J. R. Cook, of the Confederate Army, was killed almost at the spot where Cobb fell. General C. F. Jackson and General Bayard, of the Union Army, were killed, the latter dying in the Bernard House, “Mansfield,” where Franklin had his headquarters.
General T. R. R. Cobb, the gallant commander of the Georgians, fell mortally wounded at the stone wall, and tradition has said that he was killed by a shell fired from the lawn of his mother’s home, a dramatic story that is refuted by evidence that he was killed by a sharpshooter in a house at the left and in front of the “Sunken Road.”
But the brilliant Georgian, who aided in formulating the Confederate Constitution, was killed within sight of the house, where, more than forty years before, the elder Cobb met, and in which he married, she who was to be the General’s mother. Journeying late in 1819 North to attend Congress, Senator John Forsythe, who was born in Fredericksburg, and Senator Cobb, Sr., were guests of Thomas R. Rootes, Esq., at Federal Hill, a great house that sits at the edge of the town, overlooking the little valley and Marye’s Heights, and there began a romance that led to marriage of Miss Rootes and Senator Cobb, in the mansion, in 1820. From the spot where he stood when he died, had not the smoke of a terrific battle screened it, their son, the Georgian General, could have clearly seen the windows of the room in which his parents were married.
General Cobb died in the yard of a small house, just at the edge of the “Sunken Road,” ministered to in his last moments, as was many another man who drank the last bitter cup that day, by an angel of mercy and a woman of dauntless courage, Mrs. Martha Stevens.
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