Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[345] and Staggered and swayed or broke, our men from breastworks and rifle-pits, and from every imaginable place, were pouring into their bleeding masses showers of small shot. It was too much for human endurance. Six different attacks, or rather frantic dashes, were directed against the almost impregnable position of the foe. It was an exhibition of courage that was worthy of a better cause and deserved a better direction. It was no longer a scientific battle, but a wholesale slaughter of human beings. In vain Sumner pushed forward French, Hancock, and Howard; each division was repulsed with terrible loss; the Irish brigade advanced impetuously, and almost perished within a short distance of the Confederate guns; all was in vain; and Gen. Burnside, who, two miles across the river, sat upon the heights, glass in hand, saw the successive defeat of each assaulting column. When night closed in, the shattered masses of the enemy had disappeared in the town, leaving the field covered with dead and wounded.

Burnside was now at an appalling extremity. His shattered army was cowering beneath the houses of Fredericksburg, with a river in its rear, which, though threaded by pontoon bridges, would have been impassable under the pressure of attack. The thought in Richmond was that the time had at last come when the consequences of a great Confederate victory would be pursued, and its results completed; and the public waited with impatience to hear that Gen. Lee had assumed the offensive, and despatched his crippled enemy on the banks of the river. The North trembled for the same result. One day might decide the fate of the large and yet magnificent remnants of Burnside's army; they might be annihilated, or take the alternative of capitulation; and the great event might put a new aspect on the war, which had so long lingered in the trail of wasted and unfruitful blood. Expectation was high in Richmond; there was a keen impatience for the finishing blow. But in the midst of these feelings came the astounding news that two days had passed without any renewal of the battle on Gen. Lee's part, and that on the succeeding night Burnside had crossed the river without a single effort at interruption, and that a great Federal army, supposed to be in the jaws of destruction, was now quietly reorganizing in perfect security on the north bank of the river.

Various excuses have been made for Gen. Lee's omission to assume the offensive, and realize the proper result of his victory at Fredericksburg. These excuses have mostly originated in the generosity of friends and admirers. But the great commander himself, averse to all efforts of others to cover up any failure of his own, and insensible to the offers of misrepresentation made to him by flatterers, has nobly and candidly confessed his errour. In an official report he says: “The attack on the 13th had been so easily repulsed, and by so small a part of our army, that it was not supposed the enemy would limit his effort to one attempt, which, in view ”