Read Online Glory Road by Bruce Catton - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bruce Catton
Tags: Military, Non-Fiction
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gunfire ceased they were ready to fight again. They were teaching Hunt the lesson which artillerists have to learn anew in each generation—that a bombardment which will destroy buildings will not necessarily keep brave defenders from fighting on amid the wreckage.
The solution to the problem was at last accomplished by the infantry under Colonel Norman J. Hall, who had one of General Oliver Otis Howard's brigades in the II Corps and to whom General Hunt suggested that the way to get the Rebels out of Fredericksburg was to go over and push them out personally. Colonel Hall look his 7th Michigan down to the water fron t, borrowed some of Major Spaul ding's pontoons to use as assault boats, got some of the engineers detailed as oarsmen, and sent landing parties across the river despite losses. The Michigan men got a foothold along the far bank, the 19th and 20th Massachusetts were sent over as support waves, and the three regiments finally combed the last Confederates out of the waterside gun pits and went driving on to secure the town. 4
This fight was rough while it lasted. There was a swirl of door-to-door fighting, and the 20th Massachusetts lost ninety-seven officers and men in a street-fighting advance of fifty yards. Colonel Hall, a regular-army officer who admired nonchalance in action, recalled later how very Bostonian and unemotional the New England soldiers were during this fight. There was the 20th's colonel quietly telling a company commander: "Mr. Abbott, you will take your first platoon forward." Platoon advances and is almost instantly knocked out by rifle fire. "You'll have to put in the second," says the colonel; and the captain, acting slightly bored by the whole affair, goes forward with the second platoon in the best old-world style. In his official report Colonel Hall said he could not presume to say all that ought to be said about "the unflinching bravery and splendid discipline" of these Yankees. Privately, in conversation with one of the regimental officers, he remarked that the 20th, like the regulars, did its fighting without bothering to strike heroic attitudes. Groping for the expression he wanted, he hit upon an odd one: "The 20th has no poetry in a fight." 5
In the end, the soldiers got the town secured and went on to skirmish with Rebels on the outskirts. The bridges were finished, the rest of Colonel Hall's brigade came across, and from Stafford Heights the Federal gunners looked for targets beyond the town, firing furiously whenever they found one.
So the long day ended, and men remembered afterward that a strange golden dusk lay upon the plain and the surrounding hills, as if a belated Indian-summer evening had come bewildered out of peacetime autumn into wintry wartime. There was a haze on the horizon, and the western sky was scarlet and purple as the sun went down, and most of Fredericksburg seemed to be burning. A chaplain in the 33rd New York wrote that the smoke "rolled gently upward in dark columns, or, whirling aloft, chased itself in graceful rings like a thing of beauty." As it grew darker, these smoke clouds glowed red when the shell exploded, and the gun pits on Stafford Heights were picked out by stabbing flames as the guns were fired. A newspaper correspondent wrote: "Towering between us and the western sky, which was still showing its faded scarlet lining, was the huge somber pillar of grimy smoke that marked the burning of Fredericksburg. Ascending to a vast height, it bore away northward, shaped like a plume bowed in the wind." 6
Attended by whatever beauties of nature and burning homes, the Federals now had a foothold on the southern bank of the Rappahannock—which at Fredericksburg is actually the western bank, the river running nearly north to south just there—and Burnside could put his troops across as he pleased. There may have been some reason for haste. Lee was still unable to believe that Burnside planned to make his main assault here, for the hills behind
The solution to the problem was at last accomplished by the infantry under Colonel Norman J. Hall, who had one of General Oliver Otis Howard's brigades in the II Corps and to whom General Hunt suggested that the way to get the Rebels out of Fredericksburg was to go over and push them out personally. Colonel Hall look his 7th Michigan down to the water fron t, borrowed some of Major Spaul ding's pontoons to use as assault boats, got some of the engineers detailed as oarsmen, and sent landing parties across the river despite losses. The Michigan men got a foothold along the far bank, the 19th and 20th Massachusetts were sent over as support waves, and the three regiments finally combed the last Confederates out of the waterside gun pits and went driving on to secure the town. 4
This fight was rough while it lasted. There was a swirl of door-to-door fighting, and the 20th Massachusetts lost ninety-seven officers and men in a street-fighting advance of fifty yards. Colonel Hall, a regular-army officer who admired nonchalance in action, recalled later how very Bostonian and unemotional the New England soldiers were during this fight. There was the 20th's colonel quietly telling a company commander: "Mr. Abbott, you will take your first platoon forward." Platoon advances and is almost instantly knocked out by rifle fire. "You'll have to put in the second," says the colonel; and the captain, acting slightly bored by the whole affair, goes forward with the second platoon in the best old-world style. In his official report Colonel Hall said he could not presume to say all that ought to be said about "the unflinching bravery and splendid discipline" of these Yankees. Privately, in conversation with one of the regimental officers, he remarked that the 20th, like the regulars, did its fighting without bothering to strike heroic attitudes. Groping for the expression he wanted, he hit upon an odd one: "The 20th has no poetry in a fight." 5
In the end, the soldiers got the town secured and went on to skirmish with Rebels on the outskirts. The bridges were finished, the rest of Colonel Hall's brigade came across, and from Stafford Heights the Federal gunners looked for targets beyond the town, firing furiously whenever they found one.
So the long day ended, and men remembered afterward that a strange golden dusk lay upon the plain and the surrounding hills, as if a belated Indian-summer evening had come bewildered out of peacetime autumn into wintry wartime. There was a haze on the horizon, and the western sky was scarlet and purple as the sun went down, and most of Fredericksburg seemed to be burning. A chaplain in the 33rd New York wrote that the smoke "rolled gently upward in dark columns, or, whirling aloft, chased itself in graceful rings like a thing of beauty." As it grew darker, these smoke clouds glowed red when the shell exploded, and the gun pits on Stafford Heights were picked out by stabbing flames as the guns were fired. A newspaper correspondent wrote: "Towering between us and the western sky, which was still showing its faded scarlet lining, was the huge somber pillar of grimy smoke that marked the burning of Fredericksburg. Ascending to a vast height, it bore away northward, shaped like a plume bowed in the wind." 6
Attended by whatever beauties of nature and burning homes, the Federals now had a foothold on the southern bank of the Rappahannock—which at Fredericksburg is actually the western bank, the river running nearly north to south just there—and Burnside could put his troops across as he pleased. There may have been some reason for haste. Lee was still unable to believe that Burnside planned to make his main assault here, for the hills behind
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