A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [317]
De Courcy had always hoped that he would win their respect, though devotion had seemed out of the question because of his famously disciplinarian style. The 16th’s parting gift demonstrated that he had achieved far more than he had believed possible. “If I did well it was because they did better,” he replied. “Under fire they were ever firm, cool and self-reliant.” De Courcy’s Civil War experiences had been harsh and frequently heartbreaking, but were by no means in vain. The soldiers he had tried so hard to mold into idealized versions of British troops remained proudly and defiantly true to their American roots; rather, it was De Courcy himself who was transformed into an officer and leader worthy of his men.26.3
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General Meade had suffered the misfortune of embarking on his new campaign against Lee the day after eastern newspapers reported Grant’s boast that his army was “driving a big nail in the coffin of the rebellion.” Meade had learned that the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, which was little more than half the size of the 80,000-strong Army of the Potomac, was encamped in two separate locations some thirty miles apart. His plan was to creep across the Rapidan River, strike at one Confederate corps with all his might, and then quickly go after the other. But gross incompetence by one of his generals, who became lost, and miserable weather, which slowed down the others, wrecked Meade’s beautiful design. By the time all the Federals were across the river and in place, Lee had his full army ready and properly entrenched. The area, known as Mine Run, was only eight miles from Chancellorsville. It was a thickly wooded area divided by a stream that ran into the Rapidan River. When Meade surveyed his army’s position on November 30, he knew in his heart that he had failed. Though Lee had fewer than fifty thousand men at his disposal, they were expertly placed behind impregnable defenses. A soldier from Massachusetts looked across at the Confederate works and “felt death in my very bones.”39
Meade made the courageous decision to call off the attack, though he knew he would be dubbed a coward by the Northern public, and quietly pulled his army back over the Rapidan. During the retreat a sudden freeze almost paralyzed the Army of the Potomac. The 7th Maine Infantry, young Frederick Farr’s regiment, suffered its worst night of the war as it crossed the Rapidan on December 1. “We halted after marching for a short time, and the night being intensely cold we made fires,” wrote a friend of Frederick’s. “This was the last that has been seen or heard of him. It is supposed that wearied out by the exceptional hardships he had undergone, he fell asleep by one of the fires and did not awake till the rebel cavalry came up to him and took him prisoner, as the Rebs followed close at our heels.”40 No one had received word from Frederick, but it was assumed that he was in one of the prisons near Richmond.
The Army of the Potomac retired to its winter camps, which were spread out between the two “Raps,” the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers. The Army of Northern Virginia followed suit on the other side of the Rapidan, and out west, the opposing armies under Grant and Johnston did the same. There would be no more fighting until the spring. Although the Federal offensive in Virginia had not materialized, it was Lee rather than Meade who was on the defensive, and the same pattern was being repeated all over the South. Charleston held, despite the continued bombardment of its forts, but the question was for how much longer. Wilmington was still open, but Mobile and Galveston, though nominally under Confederate control, were receiving