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Sad December Saturday

 

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The scenic Rappahannock in its winding course to Chesapeake Bay bends from east to nearly south as it flows past the historic city of Fredericksburg .[1] In 1862 the old town occupied a narrow plain on the right bank of the river. On the west it was hemmed in by a low ridge known as Marye's Hill. To the north of Marye's Hill,  higher hills extended to the Rappahannock. Below the Fredericksburg of Civil War days the plain widened . Beyond the plain there were wooded hills. About midway between the river and the hills to the west, the Old Richmond Road started toward the Confederate capital. Along the base of the western hills, the Richmond, Fredericksburg , and Potomac Railroad ran south. The single track R. F. & P. wound around the foot of the hills until, four miles below the town, it crossed the Mine Road, running southwest from the Richmond Road at a place called Hamilton's Crossing. Nearby a little creek, the Massaponax, meandered from behind the western hills into the Rappahannock. The smaller Deep Run tumbled down from the hills and into the river about midway between  Fredericksburg and Hamilton's Crossing. Across the river on the east bank, opposite Fredericksburg and below the town, was also a narrow plain, surmounted by a stretch of higher ground known as Stafford Heights.

In giving Burnside the nod to try the Fredericksburg

 

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route, Lincoln had urged speed. The initial part of the movement did get underway quickly enough. By the middle of November Sumner's Right Grand Division was opposite the old Colonial town, then very lightly held by a part of Lee's Army. The bridges had been destroyed, and nobody seemed to know where the expected Union pontoons were. While the Federals sat round and waited for the lost pon­toons to arrive, Lee brought up his scattered forces and dug in along the high ground west of Fredericksburg. Burnside's plan to cross the Rappahannock without a fight had gone amiss.

Reynolds' First Corps was a part of the Left Grand Division under General William B. Franklin, who, after one more battle would be out of the war. The Center Grand Division was commanded by Hooker, now recovered from his Antietam wound and busily scheming further advance­ment up the totem pole of military command. Altogether Burnside had one hundred twenty thousand soldiers in the vicinity of Fredericksburg. Before November was over he had his missing pontoons. It was not until the next month was well begun that he appeared to have any definite plan. Burnside then decided to cross the Rappahannock at Fred­ericksburg.  It would take a terrific cannonading by the Union guns lined up on Stafford Heights, followed by a brigade landed on the Fredericksburg side by assault boats to drive out Rebel sharpshooters, before the pontoons could be laid opposite the town. About a mile down stream, near where there was to be another Union attack, the pontoon bridges would be laid without trouble from the less than eighty thousand Confederates in their now almost impregnable positions. The bridges laid, Ambrose E. Burnside,

who had been the first to admit that he had little business at

 

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the head of so vast an army, would sent it to slaughter, regi­ment after regiment.
          The December morning was clear and cold. The Buck­!ails had their extra rounds of ammunition and their three days' cooked rations packed as ordered. The First Brigade of the Reserve Corps had a new commander, Colonel William Sinclair, at its head for the ten-mile march to Fredericks­burg. There was a thin covering of snow on the ground as the Reserves with the entire First Corps started off over frozen roads toward the Rappahannock.[2]

Like almost everything else in the Union pre-Fredericksburg battle movements, the march was slow and stopped for a day or so near a place called White Oak Church somewhat short of the river. When the Bucktails reached the Rappahannock, it was amid the smoke an noise of a fierce artillery bombardment. Burnside was trying to get his pontoons in place. In an effort to drive off  the Confederate sharpshooters who had been shooting his pontoniers, the Union com­mander had called on his very effective chief artillerist, General Henry J. Hunt. With 140 guns placed on Stafford Heights, the capable Hunt was pouring it into the fine old Virginia town across the river. A Bucktail captain said: "it was the heaviest cannonading ever heard."[3]

It was December 11 and the bridges were laid, but only after Union infantry had cleaned out the last of the trouble­

some Mississippi marksmen who ha been picking off pon­toniers from Fredericksburg buildings even following the heavy bombardment. One set of bridges was opposite the town.  Another set was laid near Deep Run. On the Confederate left, well dug in back of Marye's Hill, were the men of Longstreet. On the right there was Jackson with A. P. Hill. Here the Confederate line extended from around Hamil­ton's Crossing west until it met that of of Longstreet. The hills

 

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covered with stubby trees and brush offered perfect cover for the soldiers in gray and butternut.

The next day long lines of soldiers in blue crossed the river. The First Rifles marched over one of the swaying bridges below Fredericksburg. General William F. Smith's Sixth Corps was the other corps of the Left Grand Division, which had been assigned the Union line below the town op­posite Jackson's men hidden in the wooded hills. Possibly some of the Union soldiers found sleep that ominous night along the Rappahannock. For the Bucktails, it was picket duty. The picket lines were close, and all during the long, cold, windy night the Bucktails could hear, and sometimes see, the Rebel pickets as they occasionally moved in the dark­ness. It would not have made the eerie night vigil any easier if the men had known that back at the Bernard Mansion, which was headquarters for Franklin's Grand Division, the brass were just about as ignorant of Burnside's plans as were the Union pickets. Franklin, Reynolds, and Smith wanted to see a strong attack against Stonewall early in the morning. They had formed the impression that this was the top com­mander's plan, too, but as yet he had not confirmed it .[4]

December 13 dawned as foggy as the order that was about to come from Burnside. As the Bucktails were called in from the picket line shortly before nine o'clock, the topside of the Left Grand Division was still puzzling over an order which the general commanding had issued early that misty morning.  It was something like this: Be ready for a rapid move down the Old Richmond Road. Attempt by at least one di­vision to take the high ground near Hamilton's Crossing . Keep this division well supported and its line of retreat open. [5]

The Pennsylvania Reserves were chosen as the division to make the attack. The three brigades left their riverside

 

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bivouac and moved down the stream in the still foggy morn­ing; then to the right across the Old Richmond Road. In all there were about 4,500 men in the division, one of the small­est in the Army. This time the Bucktails were not thrown out  as skirmishers. No doubt remembering that they had spent the night on the picket line, Colonel Sinclair had ordered the First Rifles to divide in squads and support the various batteries. Getting the batteries across the depression through which ran the Richmond Road proved to be quite a chore. It was mid-day, warming and clearing, by the time the Reserves were across the road and ready to make a start for a little spot of woods that jutted out on the near side of the R F & P track The First Brigade had the lead. The Second was a short distance behind the First, and the Third was faced to the left to protect that flank. Shot and shell came suddenly  bursting upon the open plain. Confederate guns in front were bad enough, but  Jeb Stuart's cavalry was astride the Old Richmond Road off on the left at a right angle to the main Confederate line in the woods ahead. Young Major John Pelham's guns were sending in a hot flank fire. The Re­serves hugged the ground while the Union artillery gradu­ally drove off the Rebel batteries which had been delivering the galling flank fire. Finally, the enemy guns in the woods and on the hill in front let up and Meade again sent his division forward.[6]

Seeing the Bucktails with the artillery several hundred yards to the rear of the advancing First Brigade, General Meade rode up to Captain Taylor and wanted to know what they were doing so far behind. Taylor told the division commander of his brigadier's order to stick with the artillery. Meade considered there was more important work for the First Rifles than artillery support. He told Taylor to move forward. As the Bucktail captain led his three hundred-odd

 

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men after their brigade, he noticed that the enemy fire had opened a large gap in the brigade left. Into the gap went Taylor and his Bucktails. They reached the woods on the near side of the railroad and on down into the shallow cut. Here the Fifth Regiment of the Third Brigade was having a stiff fight. So the Bucktails stopped for a while and tried to help the Fifth dislodge the resolute Rebels. To the right the Bucktail's own First Brigade was slowly driving the Confed­erates up the hill. The First Brigade was meeting with con­siderably more success than the Third, which, from where Taylor saw it, was stalled. As soon as the Bucktail skipper knew that his own brigade was really moving up the woody rise, he left the Fifth Regiment to its job of flushing the stubborn enemy pocket, and hurried his men up the hill with the rest of their own brigade.[7]

On a the hillside, amidst the brush and stubby trees, the First Brigade scrambled until it reached the crest. What had

happened was that the Confederates had left a space of usu­ally soggy, but on that day frozen, ground between the bri­gades of James J. Archer and James H. Lane. Colonel Sinclair's First Brigade had stumbled right into the gap. That was as far as they or any other Union soldiers got. From the right soon came a terrible blast of artillery and infantry fire. Captain McDonald wrote: "The rebels fired grape, canister, shells, railroad iron, and parts of plough shares." its en­filading fire was just too much for one brigade to endure, but they held on for a while. Sinclair was wounded. Taylor, whose horse a been shot under him, was wounded. Corporal John Looney, of Bucktail Company G, who had the regimental flag, fell mortally wounded. The soldier who picked up the colors where Looney had fallen saw blood on the tattered folds.

There were not enough of the other two brigades of

 

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Meade's Division upon the crest to furnish the desperately needed support. Doubleday's Division was supposed to be busy way back on the left. Gibbon's never got beyond the R. F. & P. track. Neither did the division of General David B. Birney, of Hooker's Grand Division, which was called up late in the battle. There was nothing to do but to fall back. Struggling back down the slope through the woods and over the uneven ground with the Confederate soldiers of General Jubal Early dinning the Rebel yell into their ears, the various, regiments became all mixed up. The battle noise was tremendous as the gray-clad soldiers pushed the Reserves back. One officer "saw a quail so terrified by fright that he knocked it over with his sword." It was a sullen, disgusted, badly mauled bunch of soldiery which filed through the lines of Birney's Division of the Third Corps holding the ground where Meade's men had started that morning.[8]

Whether rightly or wrongly, the Reserves were sore. They were fought out but the had not been out-fought. They had gained the crest of the hill and they felt that they could at least have held it had they been supported by one of the other divisions. They had no way of knowing the fuzzy kind of order under which Franklin, Reynolds, and the other commanders were trying to operate on that saddest of all sad days. Had they known, they probably would have still been mad. They had performed the job given them, all at a ter­rible cost. What good had it done? Where were all the sol­diers in those long blue lines they had seen marching across the river?[9]

The Left Grand Division had had to fight under a vague, indefinite order which did not specifically authorize the energetic all out attack which its commanders had anticipated. Franklin has been criticized for a too literal interpretation of the vague order. As to the Bucktails, they were the victims of

 

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further indefiniteness. Detached from their brigade before the battle, they were sent in just as it was beginning by the division commander, who knew that a fighting outfit such as they were was needed up front rather than hovering over batteries in the rear. Going in as they did at the last minute, Sinclair, who had detached them, probably thought that the First Rifles were with the Third Brigade. Brigadier General C. F. Jackson, in command of the Third, had no way of knowing to whom the Bucktails belonged that confused afternoon. Young Captain Taylor would turn out to be a good officer, but this was the first time he had led a regiment into battle. He had to play it by ear, and considering the rather muddled situation, he did a tolerable job.[10]

While the battle was over for the Reserves, the phase of the fight which is best remembered was yet to come. It is best remembered because of the terrible slaughter. On the Union , all afternoon Burnside sent wave after wave of

Sumner's soldiers in a frontal attack on Marye's Hill. Confederate cannon on the hill and gray-clad infantry in a sunken road behind a stone wall cut up assault after assault. The men never had a chance. The battle, had it been started much differently on that foggy morning, might have been a Union success, ended in a sanguinary set-back as twi­light closed in that sad December Saturday.

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