Read Online Glory Road by Bruce Catton - Free Book Online
Authors: Bruce Catton
Tags: Military, Non-Fiction
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downstream-bridge gang had it easy. The Confederate shore there was open and could quickly be swept clear, and by mid-m orning the downstream bridges were finished and ready for use. But upstream it was obvious that no bridges could be completed until the Rebels had been driven out of Fredericksburg, and they were never going to be dislodged by any long-range infantry fire.
The Federal army that morning contained 120,000 men, and most of them were lined up on the high ground overlooking Fredericksburg, waiting for a chance to get across, and here they were, stopped cold by a solitary Confederate brigade, 1,500 men at the most—an unwelcome modern version of Horatius at the bridge. It was intolerable, and Burnside at last called in his chief artillerist, Brigadier General Henry J. Hunt, and told him to blast Fredericksburg off the face of the earth if he had to—anything, just so he pulverized that Mississippi brigade and made it possible for the New York engineers to finish their job.
This Hunt was a notable gunner, one of the most useful officers the Union Army possessed, a good organizer and solid fighting man, keen student of the new science of gunnery, a man who believed in great massed sheaves of gunfire but who also insisted that each individual gun crew must take the time to get on the target before it fired. He had lately taken the Federal gunners over the coals about this latter point, decreeing that except when they were firing canister at close range they must not, even in red-hot action, fire at a rate faster than one round per gun in two minutes. To fire faster, he remarked, was to fire wildly, which did no good. Furthermore, an officer who shot up all his battery's ammunition in a hurry was probably an officer who wanted a good excuse to take his guns back out of action. He would be treated as such henceforth, in any case, and no battery hereafter would be allowed to withdraw from action just because it was out of ammunition. It would send for more ammunition, and while it waited it would remain under fire, officers and men at their posts, unless higher authority ordered it to withdraw. 2 Hunt had been spending a week or more getting his batteries posted on Stafford Heights, as the high ground above the river was called. He had more than 140 guns in line—Rodman three-inch rifles, ten-and twenty-pounder Parrotts, and a handful of four-and-one-half-inch siege guns, long monsters too cumbersome for field maneuver but useful in a spot like this. Rather more than one hundred of these guns would bear on the water front opposite the frustrated bridge-builders, and he gave the gunners their orders—fifty rounds per gun, pick your targets, and remember what the regulations say about firing deliberately.
So the guns opened, and a tremendous cloud of smoke came rolling down from Stafford Heights to cover the river and the open plain and the tormented town, and presently tall columns of blacker smoke from burning buildings went up to the blue sky, and the waiting Federals saw walls and roofs collapse and bricks and timbers fly through the air, while men who had lived through Malvern Hill and Antietam said this was the most thunderous cannonade they had ever heard. Most of the inhabitants of Fredericksburg had left town, so that to an extent Hunt was shelling a deserted town; even so, soldiers recorded that it was not pleasant to see the whole might of their artillery turned upon human habitations. 3
The bombardment ended at last, and there were many wrecked buildings along the water front. The engineers trotted out on the bridges again, but the ominous pin points of flame sputtered around basement windows and low barricades, and more engineers were shot down, and once again it was too hot to build bridges. General Hunt had wrecked Fredericksburg, but he had not d riven out the Mississip pians. Huddling under cover, they had had a hard time oil it, but they had not had more than they could take, and as soon as the
The Federal army that morning contained 120,000 men, and most of them were lined up on the high ground overlooking Fredericksburg, waiting for a chance to get across, and here they were, stopped cold by a solitary Confederate brigade, 1,500 men at the most—an unwelcome modern version of Horatius at the bridge. It was intolerable, and Burnside at last called in his chief artillerist, Brigadier General Henry J. Hunt, and told him to blast Fredericksburg off the face of the earth if he had to—anything, just so he pulverized that Mississippi brigade and made it possible for the New York engineers to finish their job.
This Hunt was a notable gunner, one of the most useful officers the Union Army possessed, a good organizer and solid fighting man, keen student of the new science of gunnery, a man who believed in great massed sheaves of gunfire but who also insisted that each individual gun crew must take the time to get on the target before it fired. He had lately taken the Federal gunners over the coals about this latter point, decreeing that except when they were firing canister at close range they must not, even in red-hot action, fire at a rate faster than one round per gun in two minutes. To fire faster, he remarked, was to fire wildly, which did no good. Furthermore, an officer who shot up all his battery's ammunition in a hurry was probably an officer who wanted a good excuse to take his guns back out of action. He would be treated as such henceforth, in any case, and no battery hereafter would be allowed to withdraw from action just because it was out of ammunition. It would send for more ammunition, and while it waited it would remain under fire, officers and men at their posts, unless higher authority ordered it to withdraw. 2 Hunt had been spending a week or more getting his batteries posted on Stafford Heights, as the high ground above the river was called. He had more than 140 guns in line—Rodman three-inch rifles, ten-and twenty-pounder Parrotts, and a handful of four-and-one-half-inch siege guns, long monsters too cumbersome for field maneuver but useful in a spot like this. Rather more than one hundred of these guns would bear on the water front opposite the frustrated bridge-builders, and he gave the gunners their orders—fifty rounds per gun, pick your targets, and remember what the regulations say about firing deliberately.
So the guns opened, and a tremendous cloud of smoke came rolling down from Stafford Heights to cover the river and the open plain and the tormented town, and presently tall columns of blacker smoke from burning buildings went up to the blue sky, and the waiting Federals saw walls and roofs collapse and bricks and timbers fly through the air, while men who had lived through Malvern Hill and Antietam said this was the most thunderous cannonade they had ever heard. Most of the inhabitants of Fredericksburg had left town, so that to an extent Hunt was shelling a deserted town; even so, soldiers recorded that it was not pleasant to see the whole might of their artillery turned upon human habitations. 3
The bombardment ended at last, and there were many wrecked buildings along the water front. The engineers trotted out on the bridges again, but the ominous pin points of flame sputtered around basement windows and low barricades, and more engineers were shot down, and once again it was too hot to build bridges. General Hunt had wrecked Fredericksburg, but he had not d riven out the Mississip pians. Huddling under cover, they had had a hard time oil it, but they had not had more than they could take, and as soon as the
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