Read Online Glory Road by Bruce Catton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bruce Catton
Tags: Military, Non-Fiction
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Fredericksburg, where Lee's army had been entrenching for weeks, made an ideal defensive line, and to the last moment the Confederates thought this crossing at Fredericksburg must be a ponderous feint. As a result, Jackson's corps was still watching possible crossings a dozen miles downstream. When Colonel Hall's men secured the town Lee had only half of his army on hand. But Burnside frittered away the next day with a deal of marching and countermarching, and Lee had plenty of time to call in Jackson and assemble the seventy-eight thousand men of the Army of Northern Virginia on the high ground west of the Fredericksburg plain.
That ground actually is not so very high, the hills for the most part rising only forty or fifty feet above the plain. For Lee's purposes, however, the ground was exactly right—high enough to offer an impregnable defensive line, but not high enough to scare lie Federals and keep them from attacking at all. Directly west of the town, and a little less than half a mile away, rose the modest ridg e known as Marye's Heights, with a white-pillared Virginia mansion picturesquely sited on the crest. To the north, slightly higher hills slanted off to the river, offering Lee's left flank a position that could not be taken. (It could be turned, to be sure, if the Yankees cared to march eight or ten miles upstream, but the field of Burnside's vision had narrowed so that he could see nothing but what was immediately in front of him.) To the south, the high ground pulled farther and farther away from the river, ending, nearly four air-line miles from Ma r ye's Heights, in a wooded knoll that overlooked a weedy grade crossing on the Richmond railroad, a spot known locally as Hamilton's Crossing. From the protected left-flank position to the hill by Hamilton's Crossing, the Confederates were well dug in, all set to kill as many Yankees as might come at them.
Burnside was a trained soldier who presumably knew the folly of smashing head-on into a perfect defensive position, and he had evolved a plan which might just possibly have worked if everything had gone exactly right. The left wing of his army, styled the Left Grand Division, was commanded by Major General William B. Franklin, who had demonstrated in the Antietam campaign that he would not drive ahead any faster than his commander forced him to do, but who, that limitation aside, was a solid and capable soldier. Franklin had under him two excellent army corps, the I Corps under John F. Reynolds and the VI Corps of William F. Smith— "Baldy" Smith, that staunch friend of the departed McClellan who seems to have had the stamina once to tell McClella n to his face that his dealings with Copperhead leaders looked like treason.
Franklin was to take his men across by the downstream bridges, and Sumner was to cross his Grand Division by the upper bridges. Hooker, with the remaining third of the army, was to stand by ready to support either or both. Burnside's general idea appears to have been for Franklin to drive through past Hamilton's Crossing, outflanking Lee's right and rolling his line up to the northward. Once this had begun, Sumner was to break through at Marye's Heights, Lee would then have to retreat in great haste, the jubilant Federals could despoil and slay in his wake, and the war wo aid come to a close.
That, at any rate, is what Burnside later said that he had planned and directed before the battle began. His written orders appear to have called for something rather different: a simple reconnaissance in force by Franklin, an advance by Sumner to a providentially unoccupied hill, the intervention of a fortunate army between two separated retreating bodies of Confederate troops. One of Burnside's notions, apparently, was that the Rebels would withdraw as soon as they were pushed a little, and he was careful to warn Franklin and Sumner not to let their men fire into each other when they got up on top of the line of hills.
Burnside's planning, in
That ground actually is not so very high, the hills for the most part rising only forty or fifty feet above the plain. For Lee's purposes, however, the ground was exactly right—high enough to offer an impregnable defensive line, but not high enough to scare lie Federals and keep them from attacking at all. Directly west of the town, and a little less than half a mile away, rose the modest ridg e known as Marye's Heights, with a white-pillared Virginia mansion picturesquely sited on the crest. To the north, slightly higher hills slanted off to the river, offering Lee's left flank a position that could not be taken. (It could be turned, to be sure, if the Yankees cared to march eight or ten miles upstream, but the field of Burnside's vision had narrowed so that he could see nothing but what was immediately in front of him.) To the south, the high ground pulled farther and farther away from the river, ending, nearly four air-line miles from Ma r ye's Heights, in a wooded knoll that overlooked a weedy grade crossing on the Richmond railroad, a spot known locally as Hamilton's Crossing. From the protected left-flank position to the hill by Hamilton's Crossing, the Confederates were well dug in, all set to kill as many Yankees as might come at them.
Burnside was a trained soldier who presumably knew the folly of smashing head-on into a perfect defensive position, and he had evolved a plan which might just possibly have worked if everything had gone exactly right. The left wing of his army, styled the Left Grand Division, was commanded by Major General William B. Franklin, who had demonstrated in the Antietam campaign that he would not drive ahead any faster than his commander forced him to do, but who, that limitation aside, was a solid and capable soldier. Franklin had under him two excellent army corps, the I Corps under John F. Reynolds and the VI Corps of William F. Smith— "Baldy" Smith, that staunch friend of the departed McClellan who seems to have had the stamina once to tell McClella n to his face that his dealings with Copperhead leaders looked like treason.
Franklin was to take his men across by the downstream bridges, and Sumner was to cross his Grand Division by the upper bridges. Hooker, with the remaining third of the army, was to stand by ready to support either or both. Burnside's general idea appears to have been for Franklin to drive through past Hamilton's Crossing, outflanking Lee's right and rolling his line up to the northward. Once this had begun, Sumner was to break through at Marye's Heights, Lee would then have to retreat in great haste, the jubilant Federals could despoil and slay in his wake, and the war wo aid come to a close.
That, at any rate, is what Burnside later said that he had planned and directed before the battle began. His written orders appear to have called for something rather different: a simple reconnaissance in force by Franklin, an advance by Sumner to a providentially unoccupied hill, the intervention of a fortunate army between two separated retreating bodies of Confederate troops. One of Burnside's notions, apparently, was that the Rebels would withdraw as soon as they were pushed a little, and he was careful to warn Franklin and Sumner not to let their men fire into each other when they got up on top of the line of hills.
Burnside's planning, in
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