• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 6602 0

was a rash and dangerous journey to attempt—several of the Confederates were flung with their musical instruments into a snowbank when the wagon veered off the frozen road, but, laughing and bleeding, they righted the vehicle and continued. After another hour of bumps and near misses, they arrived at the house. Borcke recalled that “the mansion was brilliantly lighted up, many fair ones had already assembled and the whole company awaited, with impatience and anxiety, the arrival of their distinguished guests and promised music.” They danced quadrilles and Virginia reels until the small hours. “Our English captain,” wrote von Borcke, “entered into the fun quite as heartily as any of us.”26 By the time they had returned to camp it was almost daybreak, and muffled sounds were coming from the Federal lines.

General Burnside had ordered his engineers to begin throwing pontoons across the Rappahannock. Fog emanating from the river gave them some cover, but the soldiers remained at the mercy of Confederate sharpshooters. Burnside’s response was to shell the town, giving those who had refused to leave their homes a taste of what was to come. Having fiddled and fretted for more than two weeks, he was now impatient to move. His intelligence reports wrongly implied that Lee’s army was in poor condition, lacking in artillery and at only half its normal 72,000 strength. The Army of the Potomac was, on paper at least, almost twice its size and equipped with 350 heavy guns. Burnside’s natural optimism increased as his army began crossing the river. Lee could hamper the Federals’ progress but he lacked the firepower to mount an effective counteroffensive.

Burnside thought he could surprise Lee with a brilliant, sweeping attack.27 Lee, on the other hand, was confident that the Federal advantages in troops and artillery were more than offset by his own high defensive position above the town; all he had to do was wait for the Army of the Potomac to expose itself on the plain. By nine o’clock on the evening of December 12, George Herbert and the 9th New York Volunteers were among the fifty thousand Union troops in control of the town. Herbert was shocked to learn that a family friend was among the five hundred Confederate prisoners, but he was unable to speak to him before they were transported to the rear.28

The following morning, December 13, Captain Phillips solemnly shook hands with Jeb Stuart’s officers and set off in search of Robert E. Lee. In the meantime, the two journalists Lawley and Vizetelly were having breakfast with the general and his staff. Lee appeared calm while they waited for the dawn mist to clear from the plains below. His hat and coat were spotless and, as always, the only sign of his rank was the three stars on his collar. After breakfast, the party rode the length of the Confederate line, looking down at the Federals below as they prepared to march out of Fredericksburg. Longstreet’s First Corps remained spread out, but his artillery was massed in tight formation along a low ridge called Marye’s Heights, which faced the center of the town. The gently sloping plain would provide little cover for the Federal advance. Lawley told his readers, “It is no wonder that every Southerner from the Commander-in-Chief down to the youngest drummer-boy, understood the strength of the ground, and contemplated the coming shock of battle with serene confidence and composure.”29

As soon as the shelling began, the skyline of Fredericksburg was transformed from quaint rooftops and spires into a broken, flaming ruin. In a letter to his brother, Herbert tried to describe what happened next: “Two miles back of the town, the ground rises gradually and forms a semi-circular range of hills somewhat in this form.” He drew a rough sketch. “This semi-circle was a mass of guns. The fire of which crossed in every direction and completely swept the plain.” The range was Marye’s Heights, and at its base lay a sunken road behind a four-foot-high stone wall. Impregnable to rifle fire, the wall provided almost total cover to the Confederates crouching