This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 11, 2012 - This week marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fredericksburg, one of the bloodiest engagements of the American Civil War. The battle was a military disaster for the North, which suffered more than 12,000 casualties while the Confederate army lost less than half that number.
Major Gen. Ambrose Burnside, the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac during the action, took responsibility for the slaughter. Burnside -- arguably the most incompetent general of the war -- is better known for really cool facial hair than for his leadership skills. In fact, side whiskers were originally named burnsides after him. The term later got changed to sideburns.
But it was Abraham Lincoln’s blunder to appoint Burnside to lead the army in the first place.
Lincoln had grown dissatisfied with the string of federal losses in the Eastern theater in the first year and a half of the war. He was also troubled by the reluctance of the commander of the Army of the Potomac, Major Gen. George McClellen, to engage Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. At one point an exasperated Lincoln sent his general a note that said, “If you do not want to use the army, I’d like to borrow it for a while.” I doubt McClellen thought it was funny.
Lincoln’s patience came to an end after the Battle of Antietam when the overly cautious McClellen let the exhausted Confederate army escape back to Virginia.
The president sacked his commander; and on Nov. 7, 1862, he offered command of the Army to Burnside. Lincoln liked Burnside because he was loyal and free of army politics. He also was a graduate of West Point who had led a successful campaign against the North Carolina coast earlier in the war. But he didn’t have much experience leading large groups of soldiers in combat.
In Burnside’s defense, he didn’t want the job. He knew that he was not competent to lead the Army of the Potomac. With the exception of Lincoln everyone seemed to agree with his self-assessment. In his Personal Memoirs Ulysses S. Grant wrote, “Burnside was not fitted [sic] to command an army. No one knew this better than himself.” Grant went on to say, “It was hardly his fault that he was ever assigned to a separate command.”
McClellen had been critical of Burnside’s leadership during the Battle of Antietam and said that “he was not fit to command more than a regiment.” But surprisingly it was McClellen who convinced Burnside to accept the promotion arguing that as a soldier he had to obey the order. You have to wonder what McClellen’s motive was in encouraging Burnside to accept the appointment when he believed he was not capable.
After reluctantly agreeing to take command, Burnside was immediately pressured by Lincoln to go on the offensive. The general decided to have his army cross the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg and then quickly move south to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond before Lee could intercept him. The plan required speed and stealth. Unfortunately, neither was achieved.
While they waited for pontoons needed to build bridges over the river (held up by administrative error), Burnside’s advisers suggested that some of the army ford the river and take out the small Rebel force in Fredericksburg. Thus, they would secure the town and the surrounding heights. But Burnside declined, as he feared potential rainstorms would trap a portion of his army on the opposite side. Although the first federal troops had arrived across from Fredericksburg on Nov. 17, the pontoons didn’t arrive until the end of the month. By that time Lee’s units occupied the high ground around the town. So much for speed and stealth.
Thus, the Federal engineers had to build the bridges under enemy fire. This was the first opposed river crossing in American military history. And when the Union troops made it over the bridges into Fredericksburg, they engaged the Confederates in street fighting. This was the Civil War’s first urban warfare. The bulk of his Union forces moved over the river on Dec. 11 and 12; and they deployed for the main action beginning on Dec. 13.
The main thrust of the attack was designed to go against Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s troops who were dug in around Prospect Hill to the south of town. The Union troops had some initial success as they exploited a gap in Jackson’s lines. But due to ambiguous orders and general confusion about the battle’s timing and objectives, the federal commanders failed to send enough troops into the assault in time to prevent the massive Confederate counterattack.
The fighting there turned into savage hand-to-hand combat that raged over an area that became known as the “Slaughter Pen.” By the time this struggle was over, each side had lost between 4,000 and 5,000 men.
Burnside had thought that Lee had weakened his position to the west of the town by sending reinforcements to the Slaughter Pen. He, therefore, began an attack to the west on Gen. Longstreet’s forces, which were entrenched on Marye’s Heights.
This was madness as Longstreet’s men were in an impenetrable position behind a stonewall. One Rebel engineer on Marye’s Heights that day said that “a chicken couldn’t live on that field when we open up on it.” Nevertheless Burnside sent wave after wave of Union soldiers against the Confederate position in a futile attempt to break through. The Federal troops charged the Confederate fortifications at least 14 times that day and were repulsed with heavy casualties each time. In total, the Union army lost approximately 8,000 men in front of the Heights compared to only 1,200 Confederate casualties. This earned Burnside the nickname, “Butcher of Fredericksburg.”
That night Burnside announced he would next lead his old IX Corps against Longstreet’s position. Fortunately his subordinates (probably led by those in IX Corps) talked him out of it. Burnside blamed himself, but surprisingly Lincoln didn’t and referred to the defeat as more of an “accident.” Carl Sandburg in his book, “Abraham Lincoln The War Years,” summed up the president’s view of the war: … “despite losing 50 percent more men, Lincoln knew that the Confederacy couldn’t survive their losses as long as the North could.” The president said, “No general yet found can face the arithmetic but the end of the war will be at hand when he shall be discovered.” Lincoln eventually found that man in Ulysses S. Grant.
Lincoln would not accept Burnside’s resignation after the battle and didn’t can him until the following month when he got the entire army stuck in the mud during the infamous Mud March. Lincoln then handed over the Army of the Potomac to Major Gen. Joseph Hooker. Another blunder.
John C. Wade, Wildwood, is a chief financial officer, amateur historian and self-proclaimed expert on the U.S. presidents. Wade is on a number of not-for-profit boards in St Louis including the World Affairs Council and Meds & Foods for Kids. He is a Churchill Fellow and on the board of governors of the National Churchill Museum.