there were not cannon in earthworks, there were rifle-pits filled with sharpshooters. Couch and Hancock had told Burnside that the heights were fortified and that it would be difficult to take them. This caused him irritation, but did not induce caution.1 The day before the battle Couch sent Francis A. Walker of his staff to the commander, to tell him that the enemy would make a stand upon the hills in the rear of the town, "that a deep trench or canal ran around Fredericksburg, which would prove a serious obstacle to the passage of troops debouching from the town to assault the works on the hills behind." Nervousness and obstinacy caused Burnside, "the sweetest, kindest, most true-hearted of men, loving and lovable," to reply with asperity that "he himself had occupied Fredericksburg with the Ninth Corps the August before" he knew the ground and Couch was mistaken.2

The order to be ready came in the early morning; the word of attack was received before noon. The Union soldiers advanced over the plain between the town and the stone wall, ground which Longstreet's superintendent of artillery said, 66 we cover so well that we will comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it."4 The canal interfered with their deployment, and the fire was therefore the more destructive. But generals and soldiers had their orders, and forward they went. No higher courage could be shown. Intelligent as brave, they felt their effort hopeless, yet did their very best to carry the stone wall. Hancock led a charge of 5000, and lost two out of every five of his veterans, of whom 156 were commissioned officers, "able and tried commanders."5 "Six times did the enemy," wrote Lee, "notwithstanding the havoc caused by our batteries, press on with great determination to within 100 yards of the foot of the hill, but here, encountering the deadly fire

1 Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 108.

2 Walker, Second Army Corps, pp. 137, 155.

3 Dec. 13.

4 Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 79.

Hancock's report.

CH. XIX.]

BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG

197

of our infantry, his columns were broken." "Oh, great God!" cried Couch, "see how our men, our poor fellows, are

66

falling." "It is only murder now." 2 Fighting Joe Hooker," who until that day had never seen fighting enough, felt that he could make no more impression upon the Confederate works than upon "the side of a mountain of rock." Putting spurs to his horse, he rode across the river and begged Burnside to desist from further attack. The commander was obstinate, and declared that the work of assault must go on.3 Humphreys, "the knight without reproach or fear," then led a bayonet charge of 4500 troops who had never been in battle before. "The stone wall was a sheet of flame that enveloped the head and flanks of the column." In brief time over a thousand men were killed and wounded. "The column turned." The regiments retired slowly, and in good order, many of the soldiers "singing and hurrahing." 5

This ended the battle. The Confederate loss was 5377; the Union 12,653, of the flower of the army. The next day Burnside was wild with grief. "Oh, those men! those men over there!" he said, pointing across the river where lay the dead and wounded, "I am thinking of them all the time." 6 This anguish combined with his debility from loss of sleep to drive him to a desperate plan. He thought of putting himself at the head of his old corps, the Ninth, and leading them in person in an assault on the Confederates behind the stone wall. Sumner advised him against such an attack, as did Franklin and several corps and division commanders. He gave it up. On the night of December 15, his movement

1 Lee's report. I do not cite the concluding clause, as the statement is disputed by Federal writers.

2 Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 113; Second Army Corps, p. 175. 3 C. W., part i. p. 668.

4 Walker's Hancock, p. 68.

5 Humphrey's report. When matters on his right were going so badly, Burnside sent this word: "Tell General Franklin that I wish him to make a vigorous attack with his whole force." This was not done. See the dis cussion of this incident by Palfrey, p. 174.

6 Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 138.

concealed by a violent storm of wind and rain, he successfully withdrew his army to the north side of the river.

Lee was not aware of the magnitude of his victory. Expecting that the Federals would renew the attack, he did not follow up his advantage. Pollard writes that the Southern public anticipated that their shattered foe, who was cut off from escape by the river in his rear, would be annihilated.' The feeling in regard to Lee might have found expression in the words of Barcas, a Carthaginian, after the battle of Cannæ: "You know, Hannibal, how to gain a victory, but not how to use it."

Burnside's loss in killed, wounded, and missing was heavy, but it was as nothing compared with the loss in the army's morale. Officers and soldiers, feeling that they had been put to a useless sacrifice, had lost confidence in their commander. At a review of the Second Corps he was received with such coldness that Sumner asked Couch 2 to call upon the men for cheers. Couch and the division commanders rode along the lines and waved their caps or swords, but did not elicit a single encouraging response. Some soldiers even gave vent to derisive cries. Had McClellan appeared before them to take command once more, the air would have rung with joyful shouts. The Democrats and some of the Republicans clamored for his restoration to the head of the army, but Lincoln could not of course entertain seriously the proposal. Burnside remained its general, and the President sent to its officers and soldiers the best measure possible of congratulation. But the demoralization of the army was complete. Officers resigned and great numbers of men deserted.

1 The Second Year of the War, p. 195. The weight of military authority is against the soundness of such an anticipation. Longstreet, Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 83; Allan, p. 513; Dabney, p. 628.

2 Now commander of the Second Corps.

8 Walker, Second Army Corps, p. 198.

Welles, Diary, Nicolay and Hay, vol. vi. p. 267; W. P. Cutler's Diary, entry Dec. 18; Boston Courier, Dec. 23; N. Y. Herald, Jan. 10, 1863; see, also, Wright's speech in the House, Jan. 30, 1863, Globe Appendix, p. 76.

CH. XIX.]

LINCOLN'S DEPRESSION

199

Although Burnside was weighed down with distress, the magnanimous nature of the man would not let go unchallenged the report gaining currency that he had been forced to the attack by orders of the President. The President, the Secretary of War, the General-in-Chief gave me no orders; the whole management was left in my hands; I am entirely responsible for the failure, he wrote in his first account of the battle. This was exactly true, but the laying bare of the whole correspondence has been necessary to convince many that this despatch in which he assumed the whole blame was not dictated to him from Washington.

Lincoln was much depressed at the disaster, the responsibility of which he must share with his general, since he had placed him in command. In the early part of December, Halleck had conceived that the paramount anxiety of the President for a victory was the necessity of counteracting the sentiment in Great Britain which favored joining France in an intervention in our contest.2 It was, indeed, true that the fear of foreign complications contributed to the solicitude born of the consciousness that he was losing rapidly his hold on the people of the North, which he then knew, as we all now know, was the requisite of success. "I have not so much of the confidence of the people as I had some time since," he said, September 22, the day on which he submitted his proclamation of emancipation to his cabinet. Since then he had suffered defeat at the ballot-box and in the field; and the defeat in battle was aggravated in the popular estimation by his mistaken change of commanders, on which no more severe comment could be made than Burnside's testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War which was speedily given to the public.4

1 Dec. 17, O. R., vol. xxi. p. 67. 2 Ibid., vol. xx. part ii. p. 123.

3 Warden's Chase, p. 482.

Burnside's testimony (as to the nature of it, see p. 189) was taken Dec. 19, and published in the N. Y, Tribune Dec. 24. See Boston Courier, Dec. 25,

The hopes of the Confederacy were high. The correspondent of the London Times wrote from Lee's headquarters: December 13 will be "a memorable day to the historian of the Decline and Fall of the American Republic." Some such thought occurred to the people of the North when they came to know the story of the battle of Fredericksburg. Grief, as great as any told in epic, in drama, or in novel, wrung their hearts at the useless sacrifice of so many noble souls. Gloom followed. "This is a day of darkness and peril to the country. . . . Under McClellan nothing was accomplished; now Burnside fails on the first trial;"2 an elastic and stout-hearted people has been brought to the brink of despondency; the North has lost heart and hope; we do not absolutely despair of the Republic: such are the reflections of public opinion we meet with in the chronicles of the time. The feeling of those in the inner councils of the nation was undoubtedly expressed by Meigs. Every day's ccnsumption of your army," he wrote Burnside, "is an immense destruction of the natural and monetary resources of the country. The country begins to feel the effect of this exhaustion, and I begin to apprehend a catastrophe. . . . I begin to doubt the possibility of maintaining the contest beyond this winter unless the popular heart is encouraged by victory on the Rappahannock. . . . As day after day has gone, my heart has sunk, and I see greater peril to our nationality in the present condition of affairs than I have seen at any time during the struggle." 4

1 Issue of Jan. 13, 1863.

66

2 W. P. Cutler, M. C. from Ohio, in his diary entry of Dec. 16, Biographical Sketch, p. 296.

N. Y. World, Dec. 24; N. Y. Tribune, Dec. 26; Boston Courier, Dec. 29. Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, while penning or dictating hopeful leaders in his journal, thus wrote privately to Colfax: "Our people all have the 'blues.' The feeling of utter hopelessness is stronger than at any time since the war began. The terrible bloody defeat of our brave army at Fredericksburg leaves us almost without hope." - Hollister's Colfax, p. 203.

Dec. 30, O. R., vol. xxi. p. 916.