This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [121]
Finally there was Grant’s army, eventually to be known as the Army of the Tennessee. Never was there an army quite like this one. It was half instrument of destiny and half frontier mob, an army that refused to accept discipline and that stamped its own imprint on its generals; predominantly and eternally, it was an army of enlisted men. Taking nothing very seriously, it would go across the land like the embodiment of wrath, pillar of fire by night and pillar of cloud by day to mark its passage, both pillars largely of its own making. For the moment it was an army forgotten, lying in obscure camps far to the south, not yet ready to trample out the way that was appointed for it. The other two armies would take the stage first, to fight terrible battles on frozen fields, providing unendurable drama at a price almost too great for payment.
3. Thin Moon and Cold Mist
Winter was approaching, a winter of cold blue moons and frozen fields, with deadly rivers winding across landscapes that had a doom on them. There was the Rappahannock, coming down from the Virginia piedmont and broadening out for a lazy curling route to the sea, the lovely town of Fredericksburg drowsing on its right bank just below the fall line; and in Tennessee there was Stone’s River, the market town of Murfreesboro lying just to the south of it, rolling Tennessee farm country all about. Two rivers and two towns, drawing the tide of war to them, with two Union armies coming in and two Confederate armies making ready for defense. Rappahannock and Stone’s rivers would be crossed, and Fredericksburg and Murfreesboro would be occupied, but many young would die before it was done.
In Virginia, whiskered Burnside considered his problem and made up his mind to do other than as McClellan had planned. The Army of the Potomac lay east of the Blue Ridge, on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, with Lee’s army grouped loosely in its front. It seemed unlikely that Lee could be outmaneuvered here, which is what McClellan had contemplated, and Burnside decided on a long sweep to his left; he would go forty miles to the southeast, cross the Rappahannock quickly at Fredericksburg, and so compel Lee to come down and fight him at a disadvantage.
In Tennessee, Rosecrans had his Army of the Cumberland at Nashville. As far as he could learn, Bragg’s army was at Murfreesboro. Rosecrans would march down and fight, and when Bragg had been crushed, the way to Chattanooga and eastern Tennessee might at last be open. Grant, meanwhile, from the Memphis area, could perhaps do something about taking Vicksburg and opening the Mississippi all the way to New Orleans.
It was Burnside who got started first. Through dismal late-November weather his men plodded cross-country amid failures of supply and equipment that told an ominous tale about defects in army management; and they got to the Rappahannock at the town of Falmouth, opposite Fredericksburg and a mile upstream, before Lee realized what was going on. Lincoln had told Burnside that his plan might work if he moved fast, and in the beginning Burnside moved very rapidly. At the end of a fortnight everything had worked as he had hoped. It remained now to cross the Rappahannock, base himself in Fredericksburg, and then go driving on to a region where Lee would have to come and attack him.
Crossing the Rappahannock, however, presented problems. There were places above Fredericksburg where sturdy men could easily