Dec. 18, 1862. |
Dec. 14-15. |
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to storm, these troops were hurled back by terrible volleys of rifle-balls, leaving seventeen hundred of their number prostrate on the field.
Night soon closed the awful conflict,
when the Army of the Potomac had nearly fifteen thousand less effective men than when it began the battle on the previous day.1 It was evident to the commanders engaged in the conflict that it would be useless to make any further attempt to carry the position by storm; but General Burnside, eager to achieve victory, prepared to hurl his old corps.
(the Ninth) on the following morning against the fatal barrier which had withstood French, Hancock, Howard, and Humphrey.
He was dissuaded by the brave Sumner, who was supported in his opposition to the proposed movement by nearly every general officer; and it was finally determined to withdraw the troops to the north bank of the Rappahannock.
For two days
they remained on the Fredericksburg side, while Lee, evidently ignorant of the real weakness and peril of his foe, fortunately maintained a defensive position, and was engaged during that time in strengthening his works in anticipation of another attack.
On the morning of the 16th he was astonished by the apparition of a great army on the Stafford Hills, and seeing none in front of his line.
During the night of the 15th Burnside had quietly withdrawn his entire force and all his guns, taken up his pontoon bridges, and offered Lee full permission to occupy Fredericksburg.
The latter accepted the boon, and boasted of a great victory, in terms wholly irreconcilable with truth and candor.2
The disaster at Fredericksburg touched Burnside's reputation as a judicious leader very severely, and for a while he was under a cloud.
Prompted by that noble generosity of his nature which made him always ready to award full honor to all in the hour of victory, he now assumed the entire responsibility of the measures which had caused a slaughter so terrible with a result so disastrous.
That generosity blunted the weapons of vituperation which the friends of the late commander of the Army of the Potomac and the enemies of the Government were too ready to use.3
Although it was plain that his officers and men distrusted his ability, yet Burnside did not stop to offer excuses,4 but, eager to do what he might to
1 Hooker reported the loss in his Grand Division at 8,548; Franklin in his at 4,679, and Sumner in his at 5,494, making a total, with a loss of 50 of the engineers, of 13,771. Of this number 1,152 had been killed, 9,101 wounded, and 8,234 missing. Many of the latter soon rejoined the army, while seventy per cent. of the wounded ranked as “slightly,” and soon recovered.
Lee at first reported his loss at “about 1,800, killed, wounded, and missing,” but the detailed reports of Longstreet and Jackson made the number 5,809, including some prisoners. The Confederate loss was probably about one-half that of the reported loss of the Nationals.2 In a General Order on the 21st, congratulating his troops on their success in repelling the National army, he said the latter had given battle “in its own time, and on ground of its own selection I” Also, that less than 20,000 Confederates had been engaged in the battle, and that those who “had advanced in full confidence of victory,” made “their escape from entire destruction” their boast. His own report, given in March the following year, and those of his subordinates, refute these statements. Lee, as we shall observe from time to time, was adroit in the use of “pious frauds” of this kind, by which his own lack of that military genius which wins solid victories was artfully concealed from all but his more able subordinates.
3 In his report to General Halleck on the 19th, be declared that he owed “every thing to the brave officers and soldiers who accomplished the feat of recrossing the river in the face of the enemy. For the failure in the attack,” he continued, “I am responsible.” Alluding to the fact that the plan of moving to Fredericksburg from Warrenton, instead of pursuing Lee toward the Rapid Anna, was not favorably considered by the authorities at Washington, and that the whole movement was left in his own hands, he said that fact made him “more responsible.”
4 Burnside and his subordinates concurred in the opinion, that had the pontoons arrived earlier, so that the army might have been transferred to the south side of the Rappahannock before Lee could concentrate his forces there, the success of Burnside's plans would doubtless have been secured. The delay in getting the pontoons earlier, or rather in the starting from Washington, appears to have been occasioned by a misunderstanding as to who should attend to the forwarding of them.
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