Fredericksburg

As we continue to follow along with the events of 150 years ago - today we reach the Battle of Fredericksburg. I've had plenty of occasion to talk about bad generals in the civil war already - but Fredericksburg might top them all...

It was a singularly one sided fight. The Union army crossed the Rappahannock river at Fredericksburg today, December 11, 1862. After a day or so of preparation, they launched an attack on the rebels on the 13th. This started south of town, where Stonewall Jackson was - Jackson was spread out, generally on high ground, but it wasn't a commanding position. The Yankees might have had a chance there - but they never attacked with more than a division (though there were two entire army corps on hand, and more available.) The North had some luck there - they broke through, briefly - but nothing came of it. The main attack came due west of town.

There - the Union soldiers had to march across a small plain into the face of a line of hills - which constituted about as impregnable a naturally occurring line of battle as either side was going to face in the war. It looked bad enough - marching across open ground to attack a hill - but it was worse than that. There were walls and a sunken road on the hill that gave the rebels perfect cover. There were various canals and bogs and whatnot on the plain that funneled the attackers right into the center of the defender's field of fire. It was hopeless - but the Union soldiers went in, and were shot to hell, a division at a time, more or less - and kept going in all afternoon. It was a mind-boggling display of pointless slaughter, and has made the Union commander, Ambrose Burnside, a watchword for military incompetence.

He was a character. He was a dreadful general, but a rather fascinating person. He invented a pretty effective breech-loading carbine before the war, though he'd gone bankrupt trying to sell it. He became a governor and Senator after the war. He leant his name to many things - the Burnside rifle - Burnside's bridge - the side burns (since he sported a magnificent set of muttonchops.) And - he stands out as one of the most overmatched men to lead an army in the war. He knew it, too - he had had some success early in the war in the Carolinas, and was offered command of the Army of the Potomac more than once in the summer of 62, after McClellan had conclusively proven his unsuitability for command, but refused it every time. He tried to refuse it again after Antietam, but was finally compelled to take the position, and do what he could... Which turned out to be the battle of Fredericksburg, and then the "Mud March" - an attempt at a winter campaign in Virginia, undone by rain....

But what ruined poor Burnside, in everything he did, was a kind of helpless stubbornness - the kind of pointless repetition of failure you see in the attacks at Fredericksburg. Though it started even before that. He'd begun the campaign with a scheme for crossing the river (at Fredericksburg) while Lee was off to the north and west. It was a decent plan, and he stole a march on Lee, and he might have gotten somewhere - except that the arrangements for the pontoon bridges were screwed up - they weren't where they were supposed to be, and by the time they were brought up, Lee had occupied the high ground around Fredericksburg, and there was no point in crossing there. But - Burnside's plan was to cross at Fredericksburg, so by god, he was going to cross at Fredericksburg - and then attack. He never seemed to be able to hold more than one thought in his head at a time.

It marked his career - especially the bad parts, and he was in the middle of some really big disasters. At Antietam, he was charged with attacking on Lee's south, to take advantage of the main attack to the north. But he had been placed in charge of 2 army corps until the last minute when one was moved to the other end of the line - but he acted as though he had 2 corps, and refused to take personal command of the one he had, even though it's commanding officer had been killed... He was supposed to cross a bridge - and he spent half the day trying to cross this one bridge, over the Antietam creek, which was wadable more or less everywhere. And so - by the time he got across and moved on Lee's army (which had been utterly wrecked) he gave time for one last batch of reinforcements to arrive and drive him back....

Then there was the battle of the Crater - that was part of the siege of Petersburg in the summer of 1864. And as happened from time to time, in the run up to the fight, you can see why Burnside might have been worth something as a general. (Truth is - everywhere but with the Army of the Potomac, he did pretty well - in the Carolinas at the beginning of the war; in east Tennessee in the fall of 1863 - he acquitted himself well. He was cursed when he went east.) The idea at the Crater was to build a mine under the rebel lines, and set off one hell of a bomb - it was a bold, risky plan, and Burnside supported it - and, in the event, when the thing blew up, it worked like a charm, and might well have broken the rebel's hold on Petersburg..... Except... Burnside, for a variety of reasons, most of them good, had decided to use a division of Colored Troops to spearhead the attack. They were, in fact, prepared very well - careful plans made, their roles defined - they were ready to go. But at the last minute, General Meade decided that they could not use black troops to lead the attack. Burnside argued for them - Grant backed up Meade.... it is clear enough that Meade and Grant were dead wrong on this - but they made the call. And Burnside - had no second thought. All he could come up with was to draw lots among the other units - and got the worst of the bunch, whose commanding officer spent the battle passed out drunk. No one bothered to try to get this unit to follow the plan for a breakthrough - so the whole business failed abysmally. (And the black soldiers ended up being sent in after the fight was lost, and were shot to hell.) That was the end of Ambrose Burnside as a civil war general.

And so.... I should note another thing that distinguishes Burnside's failures (and relates, to my last post about underwear, sort of, because war is not just shooting...) His tenure as commander in chief was marked by simply abysmal logistics and discipline. That's almost as much a mark of his failure as his stubbornness - all these campaigns went south on logistics, staff work, preparation, the details of command. At Antietam, no one under Burnside's command thought to find out if the Antietam creek could be crossed anywhere. The trouble at Fredericksburg started because no one arranged for bridges to be brought to the Rappahannock in time for the army to cross. His orders at Fredericksburg were botched - he might have intended for the attacks south of town to be as vigorous as those west of the town, but that is not what he told his generals. The mud march was - a logistical nightmare, with confusion on the roads in addition to the lousy weather. Desertion and bad discipline were at their worst during his days in command. It is notable - other commanders of the Army of the Potomac had their problems - and the army was always a ponderous and rather inefficient organization.... But McClellan was a master organizer, and trained and equipped the army to the very highest standards... and Joe Hooker, Burnside's successor, proved to be just as good as McClellan, giving the army its discipline and pride back. Burnside stands aloe on that score....