5 Delay

All delays are dangerous in war.
—John Dryden

The shooting had begun before Sumner’s grand division even reached Falmouth. On November 15 some of J. E. B. Stuart’s “horse artillery” had shelled Federal supply trains and infantry moving toward the Rappahannock River.¹ This early skirmishing seemed to presage a much bigger fight—but not just yet. Although Burnside had advanced rapidly, the vitally important pontoons had not arrived. Frustrating delays plagued the Federals and gave Lee time to reunite his army, resupply, and prepare his defenses around Fredericksburg.

On November 17 harassing fire from a Confederate light artillery battery across the Rappahannock greeted Sumner’s men as they reached Falmouth. A New York battery with longer-range and more accurate Parrott rifles scattered the Rebels in less than ten minutes. From her second-floor vantage point, Jane Howison Beale watched people running through the streets. Young women from a local paper mill “stampeded” when a shot hit their building. Lee reported, somewhat misleadingly, that Confederate forces in Fredericksburg had prevented the Yankees from crossing the river.²

Burnside arrived at Falmouth on November 19, and Lee reached Fredericksburg the following day. That morning Federal artillery mistakenly opened fire on a fifteen-car train carrying civilians out of town. This incident reconfirmed Confederate notions about their enemies’ character. “Was [there] ever greater cowardice, more unmanly or baser conduct?” a North Carolina plantation mistress raged. “Did you ever hear of such hellish malignity?” General Cobb fumed. According to the Richmond Daily Enquirer the dastardly Yankees had fired eighteen rounds at cars filled with women and children, causing one young mother to almost die of fright. Given their conduct the bluecoats must soon receive a “terrible retribution.”³

Yet Lee still could not prevent the advance units of the Federal army from crossing the Rappahannock and assumed he would have to fall back. The opportunity to occupy Fredericksburg tantalized the Federals, especially General Sumner, who gazed longingly across the river. The silver-haired old soldier understood military and political realities: he knew delay at this point could prove disastrous. Tall and slender with a neatly trimmed beard, Bull Sumner was nearing the end of his military career but had lost none of his aggressiveness or bravery. He could cross the Rappahannock and seize the Rebel guns. Nor did the task appear difficult. One of his division commanders noticed that a cow had easily waded through water hardly more than three feet deep. Sumner asked Burnside for permission to cross into Fredericksburg if he could find a good place to ford the river. The commanding general demurred. Fearing that rising waters would cut off Sumner’s men, and perhaps recalling all the trouble that having troops astride the Chickahominy River had caused McClellan during the Peninsula campaign, Burnside decided to wait for the pontoons.

Burnside also may have overestimated immediate Confederate strength, and in any case by the time the army reached Falmouth, rain was falling and the river was rising. Burnside presumed the pontoons would arrive shortly, and he had already ordered quartermasters to gather a twelve-day supply of “grain and small commissary stores.”⁴ Had the new commander made his first mistake? If Fredericksburg could be immediately occupied, the most impatient soldiers believed, Richmond could be in Federal hands by Christmas. “Remarkable counsels prevail,” a New Hampshire captain wrote in disgust. “We must wait—wait for pontoons to cross on, which will be simply waiting for the rebel army to arrive and entrench itself.”⁵ Too many fine fall days had already gone to waste.

Bad weather raised new doubts back home. Newspapers reported the Rebels strengthening their defenses in Fredericksburg and speculated that the army might spend the winter at Falmouth. If Burnside did not advance quickly, the Confederates would build more extensive fortifications around Richmond, and for students of the recent Crimean War, it seemed the Federals might face another siege of Sevastopol. Ever since the removal of McClellan, editor Manton Marble of the New York World sniffed, all the Democrats’ worst forebodings had come true. The “Halleck-Stanton” campaign in Virginia was obviously grinding to a halt.⁶

Republican newspapers, despite sometimes contrary reports in their own columns, naturally tried to scotch talk of the campaign fizzling. On November 22 the Philadelphia Inquirer carried a large map of the Fredericksburg area on the front page. “Nothing that can be seen or foreseen seems able to interfere with a continued advance,” an editor commented. With a swipe at McClellan, Horace Greeley proclaimed Burnside’s line of march “the one which a great General would have adopted at the outset.” New York Times correspondent William Swinton reported Burnside pressing forward without waiting for supplies, as a more cautious general (again read McClellan) would have done. Yet Swinton’s dispatch included this jarring prediction: “Christmas will either see us in Richmond or shattered in overwhelming defeat.”⁷

Burnside had good reason for not crossing the Rappahannock before the pontoons arrived, but allowing Sumner to occupy Fredericksburg would not have been that risky. Federal artillery on Stafford Heights would have deterred Longstreet’s men from attempting to drive them out of the town. To defeat Lee, Burnside would have to strike quickly and boldly. Unfortunately his campaign plan hinged on the timely arrival of the pontoons, and he could not adjust to meet new contingencies.

Sumner obeyed the orders against crossing the Rappahannock and even claimed later that Burnside had been right. But Hooker was neither so dutiful nor so honest. Taller than average and blessed with large, bluish-gray eyes, as well as a drinker’s florid complexion, to many of his contemporaries Hooker looked like a great general. The foot injury suffered at Antietam still troubled the commander of the Center Grand Division. Only recently had he been able to wear a shoe, and he still had to use a cane. Despite a reputation as a drunkard, rake, and conniver, Hooker had many friends in the army and of course in Washington. Newspapers kept suggesting that Fighting Joe would soon replace Burnside, and Hooker did nothing to quell such speculation.⁸

After establishing his headquarters near Hartwood Church, Hooker asked permission to cross the Rappahannock above Fredericksburg and strike at Lee. Burnside declined, worried, as with Sumner’s proposed crossing, that the unpredictable river might entrap his men. Yet before Burnside had responded, Hooker—utterly disregarding the chain of command—sent a long private dispatch to Stanton outlining his own ideas for the campaign. Hooker wanted to use his 40,000 or so men to surprise Lee before Jackson could link up with Longstreet. “The enemy . . . have counted on the McClellan delays for a long while, and have never failed in their calculations,” he said, knowing full well what Stanton thought of McClellan. It would be several days before the pontoons could be laid across the Rappahannock, the general predicted. The criticism of Burnside had been implicit but obvious. Hooker (with support from his political allies) was angling for the command.⁹

With the campaign temporarily halted, Burnside and the various generals in Sumner’s grand division established their headquarters near Falmouth. Poor farms and a few scattered church buildings of no great value were the only signs of civilization in economically depressed Stafford County. As “barren as the wastes of Africa,” claimed a New York cavalry trooper who had surely never seen that continent. Most white men and slaves had left, but the usual complement of what Federals called (sometimes with irritation, often with bemusement) “secesh females” remained.¹⁰

Nestled in the narrow floodplain between the river and Stafford Heights, the village of Falmouth in 1860 had some 150 buildings and around 500 people. “It is an old shabby town,” a Federal staff officer remarked contemptuously. “The streets are irregular and dirty, the men take kindly to whiskey and tobacco. The women are not tidy. The niggers have mostly skedaddled. In short, the whole concern looks as though they were rapidly going to the Devil.” Run-down mills and other sorry-looking buildings stood idle. Many inhabitants who had not already departed were leaving as Sumner’s troops arrived; those who remained struck one Minnesotan as densely ignorant. As in the surrounding countryside, the women and children appeared destitute.¹¹

Even without prodding by politicians the Federals would hardly wish to tarry in such a place. Around nine in the morning on November 21 Burnside, Sumner, and Provost Marshal General Marsena Rudolph Patrick conferred about arranging for the capitulation of Fredericksburg. In a brief letter addressed to Mayor Montgomery Slaughter and the Common Council, Sumner complained that several buildings harbored Confederate sharpshooters. Moreover the mills, factories, and railroad were sustaining “armed bodies in rebellion against the Government of the United States.” The general demanded the surrender of Fredericksburg by five that afternoon. If the local officials did not capitulate, he would grant them sixteen hours to evacuate sick and wounded soldiers along with women and children before he proceeded “to shell the town.”¹²

Mayor Slaughter, who did not receive Sumner’s letter until 4:40 in the afternoon, could only buy time. He denied responsibility for firing on the Federals and assured the general that the Confederates would not use Fredericksburg to manufacture or transport supplies. But “while their troops will not occupy the town, they will not permit you to do so,” he added, and in the next breath requested more time to remove the “sick and wounded, the women and children, the aged and infirm.”¹³

Wagons and ambulances soon began evacuating civilians. Suspecting that Burnside and Sumner sought a pretext to shell the town, General McLaws explained that the Confederate high command knew “too well the treacherous, fiendish Yankees character to give them any such excuse for the exercise of their natural brutality.” Yet once Longstreet’s corps arrived, it hardly mattered if the Federals crossed the river. They would still be no closer to the Confederate capital than McClellan had been, a Richmond editor observed. That Burnside was now reduced to terrorizing women and children meant that Richmond was “safe for the winter.”¹⁴ Without the pontoons, however, the river remained a near-impassible barrier, and by November 22 Sumner’s men had pulled back from the Rappahannock. Uncertainty and doubt, not the cheerfulness and confidence of the recent march, held sway on the Union side of the river.¹⁵

The object of all this maneuvering, the town of Fredericksburg, was originally built around the tobacco trade, but its fortunes had steadily declined after the War of 1812. Near the end of the 1850s, though, a burst of mill construction accompanied by a wave of boosterism offered hope for future growth. On the eve of the war the town had 5,023 inhabitants, nearly one-third of whom were either slaves or free persons of color. The other two-thirds, the white citizens, although lukewarm secessionists, generally adhered to the Confederate cause. Alternately occupied by both sides in recent months, Fredericksburg braced itself as the contending armies showed up once again on its doorstep.¹⁶

Naturally the arrival of Sumner’s men in Falmouth, coupled with the pitifully small Confederate force in town, caused great alarm. “Our hearts sank within us,” wrote Jane Beale, while on a nearby plantation Kate Corbin feared being “given again unto Satan.” Appreciative citizens shouted, “God bless you, boys!” when Longstreet’s men began gathering on the surrounding hills.¹⁷

As Burnside reached Falmouth, many of Fredericksburg’s white families and their slaves were already preparing to leave. With Federal artillery plainly visible on Stafford Heights, women and children, old people, and even the sick crowded the roads leading out of town. Their fortitude and patriotism impressed Lee, other Confederate officers, and even the Federals. After hearing how several women had supposedly fallen to their knees pleading with Lee not to surrender the town even at the price of fire and destruction, one of Sumner’s staff officers remarked, “Were the ladies of the North to imitate the South they would make heroes of us all.” Such women, however, had little time to strike virtuous poses. Regardless of their economic means, they faced tough choices. Should they leave? If so, when? And where should they go?¹⁸

Fredericksburg, Virginia, from the east bank of the Rappahannock River (Library of Congress)

Many decided that now was the time, and soon the streets and country roads became stages for heartrending scenes: here a panic-stricken widow somehow became separated from her three young girls; there frightened mothers with toddlers and feeble elderly trudged through the mud in the frosty air. Household goods overflowed carts and wagons, and discarded furniture lay scattered in the refugees’ wake. Confederate soldiers watched the procession with dismay, wondering where the people would go and if they would ever return.¹⁹

Some folks took shelter in churches or barns, but many had to sleep in “brush and blanket” makeshifts or huddle around fence corners. Near Salem Church, three miles west of town, women and children pieced together tents from old quilts and counterpanes. The sight of “delicate women, beautiful girls, and tender young children” driven from “comfortable homes” saddened a Confederate artillery officer. White southerners reared to value honor, respectability, and social distinctions now faced an anomalous situation because even in Virginia the war had already had a leveling effect. One of Pickett’s men noticed an especially pathetic group standing watch over their bedding and scanty provisions while waiting for tents to be set up. During the cold nights the cries of shivering children echoed through the woods.²⁰

Refugees overflowed nearby country houses and outbuildings. Hospitable home owners covered their sofas with sheets and spread pallets on the floors, while hotel lobbies and billiard rooms in nearby villages served as temporary quarters. Once-proud white families could not disdain sleeping in slave cabins.²¹

In this topsy-turvy world more fortunate refugees, some with body servants in tow, fled by rail to Richmond. Many arrived on November 23 and 24, but the exodus continued for the rest of the week. Some eventually scattered to Petersburg or Charlottesville, but most jammed the Confederate capital, already overflowing from earlier waves of refugees. Families without prior arrangements spent their first night in town sleeping on cars in the station. The trains eventually disgorged a mass of confused, distraught, and desperate women and children.²²

A formerly comfortable Fredericksburg merchant lived with his wife and three young daughters in a damp Richmond basement. A mother and her four children crowded in a single room, supported only by the small earnings of one daughter who signed Confederate notes in the Treasury Department. Less fortunate refugees without political connections had trouble finding any work. Benevolent local women raised only modest sums for displaced families; the influx of hungry mouths drove up food prices; the high costs of muslin and calico brought homespun dresses back into fashion.²³

When most of the Federals pulled back from the riverbank and settled in camps, a few brave souls returned to their Fredericksburg homes. Maria Hamilton hoped the Rappahannock would prove both “a barrier and safeguard to us.” For the rest of November and into December, while some families still left, others decided to take their chances back in town. Yet life was anything but normal. The churches were closed, and rumors could still send folks packing at a moment’s notice. To Confederate soldiers Fredericksburg seemed eerily deserted.²⁴

That a town associated with young George Washington and national heroes such as Hugh Mercer, John Paul Jones, and James Monroe—what had once been, according to a Richmond editor, a place of “intelligence, refinement, and moral elevation”—should become a scene of “exile, desolation, and ruin” sparked great indignation. Some soldiers recoiled in horror imagining their own families being forced out into the cold; others vowed bloody vengeance. Even devout Christians, ignoring scriptural admonitions about loving enemies, called for retribution against the “vandal hordes.”²⁵

For the time being, however, the few people still in town were safe enough because Burnside had decided against crossing the Rappahannock until the pontoons arrived. But nearly everything related to the pontoons had gone wrong. During the November 12 meeting with Halleck, Meigs, and Haupt, there had apparently been desultory discussion about the need for bridging material. Burnside had erroneously assumed that pontoons were already en route from Berlin, Maryland, to Washington and that Halleck would expedite their movement to Falmouth. Brig. Gen. Daniel P. Woodbury, a West Point graduate and veteran engineer, working with Haupt on reconstructing the wharves at Aquia Creek, also had responsibility for transporting the pontoons. Halleck later claimed that Burnside was supposed to issue any necessary orders to Woodbury.²⁶

In fact, an order to transport pontoons to Washington had been sent on November 6—not by telegraph but through the mails—and so did not reach Berlin until November 12. Capt. Ira Spaulding of the 50th New York Engineers had managed to get thirty-six pontoon boats to Washington by November 14. Halleck apparently believed, however, that at least some of them had arrived earlier, because on the twelfth he had ordered Woodbury to move all bridging material to Aquia Creek.²⁷

A hopeless mess ensued: Woodbury, Spaulding, and Halleck either misunderstood each other or simply failed to communicate. On November 14 Burnside’s chief engineer, Lt. Cyrus B. Comstock, had wired twice asking about the progress of the pontoons. Burnside had assumed the pontoons would arrive as Sumner’s men reached Falmouth, but the best that Woodbury could promise was that one pontoon train—the heavy boats and equipment came by wagon—might be sent overland from Washington on November 16 and that a second train might be sent by water. Horse and harness problems had delayed the overland train’s departure until the afternoon of November 19, the day Burnside arrived at Falmouth. All this time Spaulding had assumed there was no great hurry.²⁸

Woodbury had supposedly advised Halleck to delay the army’s movement for five days to allow more time for transporting the pontoons, but the general in chief had brushed aside the suggestion. Neither Halleck nor anyone else apparently discussed this matter with Haupt or Meigs. In fact, nobody in Washington appeared to grasp the importance of the pontoons to the success of the campaign. If thirty-six pontoon boats could leave Washington on November 16 or 17 as Woodbury had originally promised, Burnside decided to proceed with the march to Falmouth as scheduled. Yet with delays already occurring, he should hardly have counted on smooth sailing. As Clausewitz and other commentators have pointed out, the unexpected disrupts military plans and tests a commander’s judgment. Given the political pressure for an advance, Burnside could not afford to remain at Warrenton long, but if the army’s advance depended on such precise timing and coordination, it was doomed to fail.²⁹

On November 22 Burnside sent an angry but diplomatically worded letter to Halleck. He complained about the delays and the failure of commissary wagons to reach Falmouth while his army was on the march.

I cannot make the promise of probable success with the faith that I did when I supposed that all parts of the plan would be carried out.... I do not recall these facts in any captious spirit, but simply to impress upon the General-in-Chief that he cannot expect me to do as much as if all the parts of the plan had been carried out. ... I am not prepared to say that every effort has not been made to carry out the other parts of this plan; but I must, in honesty and candor, say that I cannot feel that the move indicated in my plan of operations will be successful after two very important parts of the plan have not been carried out, no matter for what reason. The President said that the movement, in order to be successful, must be made quickly, and I thought the same.

Predictably, Halleck denied responsibility for any delays and suggested that Burnside call General Woodbury “to an account.” The general in chief later attributed the entire fiasco to “accident and the elements.” Because of further delays in loading the pontoons on wagons and hauling them from Belle Plain, not until November 24 did any pontoons reach Falmouth.³⁰ By November 27 the rest of the pontoons had finally straggled in, ten days late by Burnside’s reckoning. Sumner still wanted to cross the Rappahannock, but unsure about Jackson’s location and intentions, Burnside decided not to attack Longstreet.³¹

Burnside’s inaction did not stop rumors of bridges being laid, and even wary veterans could still work up some enthusiasm for another crack at Lee. A soldier in the 22nd Massachusetts distilled his thoughts into several powerful sentences: “I am for pushing this matter ahead, and never faltering, until... every rebel hearthstone is desolate, to secure our former prosperity and bring about peace; and my bones may moulder in Virginia if thereby one ‘jot or tittle’ is added to the good of the Federal army.” However much he dreaded the sound of whizzing bullets, his devotion to the Union kept him going. He hated military life but could not abandon the sacred cause: “I have taken my life in my hands to meet the foe, and for Freedom and the Old Constitution I will battle on.”³²

Although new recruits were most likely to express confidence in Burnside and despite delays and hardships many soldiers still praised their new commander, steady determination mingled with somber reflections on the bloody work ahead or the potential death toll in winter camps. A chaplain in the 133rd Pennsylvania declared, “Many who are now buoyant with life will lie mangled and torn on the field.” A colonel in the 37th Massachusetts asked, “Will the country blame Burnside, if in carrying out a plan of necessity and one adopted by the Administration, he shall leave upon the cold, unwelcome soil of Virginia many a cherished son and brother, fallen not by bullet or saber, but stricken down by continued and severe exposure?” An officer in the 79th New York stated, “The field of battle with all its horrors is redeemed somewhat by the thought that the dead on both sides have fallen in a cause sacred in their own eyes at least.” Such grim comments surely depressed the home folks and contrasted sharply with newspaper headlines trumpeting a glorious campaign in progress.³³

Emotions swung back and forth wildly. Inactivity frustrated everyone, and soldiers began God-damning Meigs and other bureaucrats for causing the delay. Whatever the reason, “the army will not brook disappointment,” a Pennsylvania lieutenant maintained. Surely the bridges would be thrown across the Rappahannock in a day or so. Indeed, from November 21 on, the engineering officers seemed to be working feverishly.³⁴

But still nothing much happened. Suspecting that roads to Richmond were becoming quagmires after the recent rains, a Hoosier volunteer drew the obvious conclusion: “No general—no army can conquer the elements.” The failure to cross the Rappahannock was allowing the Confederates to concentrate their forces, and one of Burnside’s most loyal supporters feared the Army of the Potomac now faced between 60,000 and 100,000 Rebel troops.³⁵ Even if demoralization had not exactly set in, Federal prospects appeared to grow darker with each passing day.

For his part Lee did not know what to make of the Federals’ rapid advance and sudden halt. As late as November 23 he was still moving artillery to the North Anna River, and with Jackson at Winchester, the Army of Northern Virginia stood in some danger. Although Lee recognized the political pressure on the enemy, he hesitated to bring the rest of his army to Fredericksburg immediately because he hoped that Jackson might be able to fall on Burnside’s flank.³⁶

On November 18 Lee suggested that Jackson begin transferring divisions out of the Shenandoah Valley and across the Blue Ridge Mountains, though he gave Stonewall considerable leeway on the timing of his march. As was his wont, Jackson did not dally. By November 21 he had left Winchester and had begun moving up the Valley Pike. His troops welcomed the change. “This army is in the best condition I have ever known it,” an artillery sergeant told his mother. “The men are cheerful almost to recklessness.” The Federals were likely to cross the Rappahannock, Lee advised Jackson, and it was “desirable that the whole army should be united.” Whatever inner turmoil Lee may have experienced, his correspondence during this period betrayed no sense of urgency or even a hint that the Federals posed any great threat to his army.³⁷

Jackson maintained his usual reticence; his staff learned little about their marching schedule or destination. An English newspaper correspondent thought Jackson “genial” and “courteous” but careless about dress and spartan in habits. So it was much to everyone’s surprise when, on the morning of November 24, the general donned a new uniform coat, a gift from Jeb Stuart, and even a new hat. The sight of a suddenly dapper Stonewall Jackson greatly amused his aides, who like the rest of the officers, seemed confident, eager for battle.³⁸

Reveille sounded at 4:30 A.M., and two hours later Jackson’s “foot cavalry” was on the road, making 13 to 17 miles a day through the valleys and mountains. The last of Jackson’s men neared Fredericksburg on December 3; they had tramped roughly 175 miles in twelve days, and they looked it. An English observer noted their “dingy homespun dress, nondescript caps, . . . unshaven, unwashed, uncombed heads and faces.”³⁹

To many soldiers this journey was unforgettable. On November 24, as Jackson’s men left New Market heading southeast across the mountains, they entered spectacular country. As they crested the Blue Ridge, the awesome and beautiful scene before them made a powerful impression. The turnpike road wound “about like a serpent,” a Georgia private marveled, and for these men the image of the roads slithering like a long snake to the top of the mountain and then down stuck in their minds for years. “Thousands of bivouac fires, flashing and glowing on the mountain side,” a South Carolinian recalled, punctuated the night.⁴⁰ But with the breathtaking landscape came a sudden chill. Men would awaken with frost in their hair, food frozen in their haversacks, and sometimes their blankets dusted with snow.⁴¹

Hundreds of men began the trek barefoot; still more would be without shoes or socks by the end. One sympathetic woman in Winchester noted how “cold and red and dirty” the soldiers’ feet looked. Worse were large bleeding cracks in toes and feet that left red traces along the line of march. Such scenes called to mind harrowing tales from the American Revolution. An Alabama colonel insisted that barefoot men in his regiment ride in ambulances. But most simply endured. “It is useless for a man to say what he can stand and what he cannot stand unless he tries,” a sore-footed Georgia sergeant mused. “I find as much depends upon the energy and spirits of a man, as his strength.”⁴²

The same could be said of the generals and the whole army. Union forces, in Lee’s view, would likely cross the Rappahannock downstream near Port Royal under protection of their gunboats rather than attack Fredericksburg directly. By November 28, though, Lee confessed to being mystified: “What the designs of the enemy are I do not know.” The army’s activities reflected the confusion. Even as some men from Pickett’s Division began tearing up railroad tracks between Fredericksburg and Hamilton’s Crossing—a sure sign of impending withdrawal—Brig. Gen. William Nelson Pendleton worked at improving artillery positions along the Rappahannock.⁴³

Few Confederates seemed to expect a fight at Fredericksburg. Even if the Yanks crossed the Rappahannock, a North Carolina lieutenant promised that “we will give them a merry time.” Others bragged how they were “going to walk right through Burnside and gobble him up.”⁴⁴ Confidence reigned in Richmond and throughout the eastern Confederacy for a host of reasons: Burnside’s entire campaign rested on a grand delusion about his army’s irresistible strength; attacking Fredericksburg would play into Lee’s hands; the bluecoats were obviously stalled on the Rappahannock; the Army of the Potomac would soon have a new commander; after another defeat the northern people would finally realize that the Confederates could not be easily crushed. Only the strongly anti-Davis Charleston Mercury offered a demurrer: “There is no path to security for the Confederate States, but one of bloody victory over a bloodthirsty foe. The task before us is one where doubt cannot interpose, timidity cannot shrink, humanity cannot soften. Failure is destruction.”⁴⁵

All easily enough said, but like the Federals, Confederate troops at Fredericksburg, with Jackson’s men still on the march, had begun to feel the bite of winter. Soldiers huddled around fires, though frost lay on their blankets in the morning. Even officers had trouble keeping warm.⁴⁶ Shortages of tents and blankets epitomized pervasive supply problems. Bureaucratic disputes had slowed rail transportation, and Unionist underground activity also may have disrupted shipments from Richmond to Fredericksburg. The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad supplied Lee; but the bridge over the South Anna River was not rebuilt until November 24, and in any case the trains were unloaded at Hamilton’s Crossing to keep any stores out of Federal artillery range.⁴⁷

Enlisted men suffered most from the shoe shortage. In mid-November more than 6,000 men in Longstreet’s corps were barefoot. Even after a large shipment from Richmond, some 2,000 men still had no shoes, and perhaps as many as 3,000 others wore shoes that would never withstand another march. A Virginia cavalryman described the most common cause for straggling: “many of our soldiers barefooted walking over frozen ground, and muddy roads, their feet torn and lacerated by stones, and unable to keep up, obliged to fall in the rear.” Quartermaster Gen. Abraham C. Myers tried to pressure draft-exempt tanners to increase their output, but much to Lee’s dismay, he also had some 2,000 soldiers detailed to make shoes in Richmond, Atlanta, and Columbus, Georgia. Even then one shipment of government shoes, Lee complained, was “of a very inferior character, and unfit for service.”⁴⁸

The shoe crisis called forth imaginative but sadly ineffective measures. Longstreet issued a general order in early November directing the men to fashion moccasins from the hides of recently slaughtered cattle. With the hair sides turned in to keep feet warm, these substitutes proved to be only marginal stopgaps. The cowhide moccasins not only stank but also became slippery in snow and mud, and they quickly wore out. Some men preferred remaining barefoot or wrapping their feet in rags and straw.⁴⁹ Jackson’s men also cobbled together moccasins, and with equally little enthusiasm. On the march the leather stretched during the day but at night dried and shrank so that men hobbled. Sometimes they had to cut the torturous things off their feet, though a few soldiers were still wearing theirs in early December.⁵⁰

The pain of frostbitten feet could be felt by the politicians. When Confederate troops—many without shoes—had marched through Richmond in early November, the president’s political enemies blasted the quartermaster general. Suggesting that Myers, Davis, and the cabinet should go barefoot instead of these noble heroes, the Richmond Daily Whig had excoriated the administration: “The Government cannot be trusted. It has no forethought, or is entirely indifferent to the conditions of the men.” After a letter appeared in several papers urging people to donate shoes, this same editor scathingly lampooned high officials “sitting by a rousing fire, toasting their well-shod feet, and thinking of anything but the soldiers.” Such timeservers did little but draw their bloated salaries and dispense patronage to their friends.⁵¹

The pro-Davis Richmond Daily Enquirer claimed that the number of barefoot soldiers had been greatly exaggerated but still encouraged a local committee to collect shoes. Yet even charitable appeals often contained none too subtle swipes at the administration. The acerbic Charleston Mercury disingenuously reminded its readers that there was “something more important and pressing for the people now than to sit in judgment on delinquent officials” and that it was up to them to “supply the neglect of their public agents.” Indeed the needs were overwhelming and the situation dangerous. Families of barefoot soldiers petitioned for their discharge, and behind such pleas lurked threats of desertion.⁵² “I wouldn’t care much [if] the Confederacy was broke into a thousand fragments no how for they treat the army like so many dogs,” wrote a tattered Georgian. Some men had no socks or mittens; others lacked shirts or drawers. Regimental letters in newspapers described men wearing shoes and clothing unfit even for slaves, a telling reference in a slaveholders’ republic.⁵³

Although faith in Lee and confidence in their own fighting ability took the edge off many complaints, food shortages were another matter. Temporary privations might be understood and endured, but scanty rations day after day eventually sapped men’s physical and emotional reserves. In November 1862 the War Department outlined the dimensions of the crisis for General Lee: there were 100,000 fewer hogs than last year, poor corn crops in Tennessee and northwestern Georgia, and less than half the usual wheat production in Virginia. Reduced rations of flour and fresh beef could hardly sustain an army during arduous campaigning. Lee’s quartermasters bought some food from farmers, but local supplies were soon exhausted. The Army of Northern Virginia consumed a thousand head of cattle each week, and at that rate beef would disappear in two months.⁵⁴

Exposure, tattered clothes, and meager rations naturally spawned illness. Some fevers had persisted into the fall months, as did an outbreak of smallpox after Antietam. With the approach of winter, men simply could not shake off colds. Intestinal diseases still proved deadly; a North Carolinian told of one diarrhea sufferer who had died on his way to the sinks.⁵⁵ Settling into winter quarters would only add poor sanitation to the problem of persistent shortages.

Illness and discomfort aside, there remained the dull routine of drill and picket duties, which spurred a search for diversion. Stuart’s staff held dinner parties (albeit with spartan menus) and even visited a nearby estate for a fox hunt. Literate men devoured books, including dictionaries and almanacs; several of Jackson’s officers read or recited from Shakespeare, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Charles Dickens. The Washington Artillery’s Literary and Dramatic Association performed a “roaring farce” titled “The Lady of Lyon,” with the soldiers playing both male and female parts. Any appearance of real women in the camps, especially if they were well dressed and attractive, created a stir, and more enterprising fellows sought out female company in the surrounding countryside. One romantic South Carolinian crossed over to a small island in the Rappahannock to catch a glimpse of a beautiful young lady who supposedly lived there.⁵⁶ Such a fairy tale fit nicely the sentimentalism of the age.

There are also accounts of less savory diversions, however. Confederate soldiers, far from models of decorum, naturally hankered to leave camp, even if only briefly. The height of adventure was to sneak past guards, go into Fredericksburg, and devour greasy pies or dried-up apple turnovers. One hapless sutler charging outlandish prices for gingerbread lost not only his horses and the wheels off his wagon, but his goods as well.⁵⁷ Confederate enlisted men and officers committed more serious breaches of discipline as well. Instances of theft and vandalism filled court-martial records, and evidence of what soldiers euphemistically called “horizontal refreshment” appeared in medical reports of venereal disease.⁵⁸

Alcohol accompanied and stimulated other vices. A bottle of brandy sent from home occasioned a celebration that easily got out of hand. Noisy tipplers serenaded their sleeping comrades past midnight, engaged in raillery against officers, or gave impromptu speeches satirizing Confederate supply problems. A dram of whiskey punch or some other concoction hit the spot on a cold night. After one of his men absconded to Richmond on a drunk and ended up missing the battle of Fredericksburg, Brig. Gen. James J. Archer, whose brigade needed every man in line that day, adopted a teetotal position: “I wish all the liquor in the universe was poured out & sunk.”⁵⁹

The men were no more likely to give up liquor than they were to swear off cards or dice. Gambling appeared to be a besetting sin for Confederate soldiers. A Louisiana chaplain in Jackson’s corps had tried to stamp out this vice, but whenever he was away, the boys broke out the cards. The resourceful chaplain once slipped back into camp, grabbed more than $60 from a large pot, and donated the money to Richmond orphans. In mid-November General Lee issued a general order expressing dismay that “a habit so pernicious and demoralizing would be found among men engaged in a cause... demanding the highest virtue and purest morality in its supporters.” Attempts to suppress gambling, however, failed. On rare Confederate paydays, poker, keno, and other popular games cleaned out many a poor private. Inveterate gamblers played from morning until night, and despite efforts to stop such activities, soldiers set up chuck-a-luck boards in an area called the “Devil’s Half-Acre” and lay in wait for unwary country boys. The folks back home, of course, were spared news of such wickedness. Indeed, one army correspondent assured his readers that the “soldier with his sister’s testament in his pocket and his mother’s precepts in his heart cannot stoop to a vice so low and so degrading.”⁶⁰

Letters home, especially those addressed to sweethearts, wives, mothers, and sisters, often presented a sanitized version of camp life. But however circumspect, correspondence maintained essential ties between soldiers and their communities. Approximately four of five Confederates were literate, although some were only marginally so, judging by their often exotic spelling and tortured syntax. From the camps around Fredericksburg many Confederates sent news of their recent movements to their home folks—everything from hastily scribbled notes to carefully drafted letters running seven or eight pages. Captured Yankee stationery alleviated a chronic shortage of paper, and families did not object to letters written with stubby pencils.⁶¹

Yet when a soldier wrote home, he had little assurance that his letters would arrive safely or that he would receive a response. Because the railroad stopped five miles from Fredericksburg, Lee asked Postmaster Gen. John H. Reagan to either leave army mail in Richmond or turn it over to his chief quartermaster. The post office could hardly be expected to deliver often illegibly and inaccurately addressed mail to regiments on the move. But such extenuations, no matter how reasonable, failed to satisfy civilian or military critics.⁶²

Even if the post office had been unusually efficient, soldiers still would never have thought they heard from home often enough. Many began their letters with complaints that sometimes filled a page or more about their loved ones neglecting to write. The soldiers themselves had reasonable excuses for their spotty correspondence. “Don’t measure the length of your letters by mine,” a Virginia cavalry officer admonished his wife. “I have to write sitting on the bare ground, with the flag of my saddle for a desk, and with fingers so cold the pen will scarcely stay in them, to say nothing of the ever varying smoke which keeps me in constant tears.” Soldiers and civilians alike devised schedules for writing or numbered their letters to track delivery, but their ingenuity could not counteract the delays and inefficiencies of the postal system.⁶³

Mail was essential for both soldiers and civilians. Letters could boost morale, and their absence could stifle it. A quartermaster in Pickett’s Division thought his wife’s missives never seemed long enough, and he did not even mind deciphering the cross-written sentences. “Tell me everything you do, say, think, and dream,” he urged. “The slightest circumstance of home is full of interest to me and affords me untold pleasure.” An Alabama lieutenant pointedly commented about how soldiers needed to know that their sacrifices were appreciated. “Give the boys letters written in a cheerful, hopeful spirit and they are more conducive to health than medicine and more potent to prevent desertion than the articles of war.” Yet letters, both sent and received, brought their share of pain as well. “These hours devoted to communication with dear ones at home bring their bitter fruits of memory,” a South Carolina captain remarked.⁶⁴

The sheer distance from families brought past wrongs, minor arguments, and unspoken apologies more clearly to mind. Letters carried undercurrents of regret. The dullness of camp combined with the fear of combat intensified feelings of isolation and despair. Had he known how long he would be away from home, John French White of the 32nd Virginia confessed to his wife, he never would have enlisted.⁶⁵ It would be a mistake, however, to equate such comments with demoralization. Patriotism and a sense of honor and comradeship kept soldiers at their posts. In Americus, Georgia, Penelope Pryor hoped that her husband, Capt. Shepherd Green Pryor of the 12th Georgia, could come home soon. She strove for “fortitude and patriotism” but, having recently buried two brothers, could not imagine coping with the loss of a husband. He carefully explained to her the impossibility of furloughs and the army’s need for every available man. Their correspondence proceeded in delicate counterpoint. “I am content to bow submissively to my affliction,” she wrote. “You must bear my absence as well as you can do,” he replied.⁶⁶

Separation sometimes strengthened relationships, but love could easily wilt under wartime pressures. Many men were better able to express their feelings through the mail than in person. A lovesick Georgia major promised his sweetheart he would continue writing even if he did not hear from her for six months. “You and I, Hester, should know each other and love each other sufficiently well to have no doubts as to one another’s feelings and wishes.... We may never be one, but our destinies are blended. Neither can ever efface the impression made by the other.”⁶⁷ Idle weeks in camp could set a man thinking about trust and loyalty. Affection might fade, but it could just as easily grow stronger, especially under the powerful influence of imagined hopes for the future.

Married men who went to war wanted their families to remain unchanged, as if time could somehow stop for civilians. They enjoyed receiving letters offering glimpses of life at home and liked to imagine their loved ones enjoying simple domestic pleasures. The correspondence, however, turned bittersweet because many men badly missed their children. Word of a son who had contracted whooping cough, reports of school troubles, and even stories of minor mischief caused worry. The death of a child stirred their deepest emotions, especially in the absence of a spouse with which to share the trauma. That great romantic J. E. B. Stuart warbled about sending his wife “a small box with little mementos of this humbug husband that you make so much fuss over” before he lapsed into a mournful lament for their daughter, who “loved her Pa like idolatry and is now lifeless clay.”⁶⁸

Children died, but children were also born. Newly enlisted recruits or men who had recently returned from furloughs worried about their pregnant wives and fretted over the absence of home news. Their concerns were not allayed by the sometimes coy language with which women discussed their condition. One exasperated Virginia volunteer finally suggested that his beloved stop resorting to euphemisms and write in plain language. For their part soon-to-be mothers dreaded giving birth alone. Difficult deliveries and postpartum complications only made the separation of husband and wife more agonizing. In Fluvanna County, Virginia, Arabella Speairs Pettit, severely ill for weeks after the birth of a son, praised her “noble husband,” artillery sergeant William B. Pettit, for bearing their “severe trials” with a “mind far superior to his poor weak wife’s.” All the “painful trouble” she was enduring “on account of your love for me” saddened Pettit. With a dollop of guilt and a larger dose of self-satisfaction, he rejoiced that the “hollowness of heart, faithlessness, indifference or downright hate” that characterized so many marriages had not stained his own.⁶⁹

Financial worries added to the difficulties of marriage at a distance. Wives, struggling to keep their children clothed and fed, asked for instructions from absent husbands about land sales, debts, and taxes. Advice was considerably more plentiful than dollars, though. “If God spares my life,” a Georgian wrote his wife, “I will send you some [money] before Christmas Day.” Even when Confederate soldiers were paid—and most regiments were badly in arrears—enlisted men seldom had much cash to send home.⁷⁰

Men were supposed to care for their families but could not play their accustomed parts as patriarchal protectors of hearth and home. It is tempting to exaggerate temporary changes in marital roles and overanalyze shifting power relationships, but the most important questions at the time were more mundane and practical. Letters and newspapers from home overflowed with reports of shortages and high prices. Would wives have enough wood for the winter? What about warm clothes for the children? Would there be enough to eat? “I fear desertion will be frequent . . . if there is not something done for the support of the soldiers’ families,” a western North Carolina woman predicted after corn hit $2.00 a bushel.⁷¹

All these woes, especially the death of loved ones back home, demanded more than human strength, and many soldiers came to rely on their religious faith. Robert E. Lee himself set the tone. Weeks after his daughter Annie had died of typhoid, he searched for consolation in pious formulas: “But the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. . . . I had always counted, if God should spare me a few days of peace after this cruel war was ended, that I should have her with me. But year after year my hopes go out, and I must be resigned.” In the midst of bloody combat and personal trials, soldiers thanked God for his many mercies and hoped that their lives might be preserved for some great future work.⁷²

Yet Christians also realized that in wartime, sin was an especially insidious foe. “Vice of all kinds [is] sadly prevalent in the army,” a Virginian commented. “May God in His mercy check this.” Swearing, drinking, gambling, and—if one dared say it—whoring became commonplace. So did irreverent and ribald talk. Men grew accustomed to working on Sundays, though Stonewall Jackson still refused to read letters on the Sabbath and warned that if the Confederate Congress did not ban Sunday mails, the southern nation could hardly “escape [God’s] wrath.”⁷³

Even as prayer, Bible reading, and religious services helped some men cope with daily troubles and fear of death, in many regiments the spirit of the Lord seemed far away. Chaplains offered communion, baptized converts, visited the sick, and buried the dead, though these good shepherds were always in short supply and their flocks often indifferent. Congress had authorized the employment of chaplains but soon slashed their pay from $85 to $50 a month. These men of God occupied an anomalous position. They shared the soldiers’ poor clothing, short rations, and uncertain pay but were not supposed to take up arms. Earning the respect of the enlisted men proved difficult, especially for those who lacked the energy and eloquence to touch the hearts of hardened veterans. Some chaplains served only briefly before retreating to pulpits back home; others grew discouraged over spiritual listlessness in the ranks.⁷⁴

With Lee’s men settling into camps around Fredericksburg, revival services that had begun earlier in the fall continued, as many as five or six a day among the scattered brigades. Nightly meetings drew large crowds, and scores of men responded to the altar calls. To many officers, Christian soldiers were simply better soldiers, and those who witnessed the great bloodletting of Antietam and other recent battles were ripe for conversion. Jackson welcomed signs of religious zeal, though some of it was probably manufactured to impress pious officers, and he predicted that God would surely bless the army.⁷⁵

In the midst of lively revivals, soldiers brooded over the state of their souls. The Sabbath nurtured homesickness and, for some, thoughts about what it meant for Christians to kill other Christians. Even the most confident volunteers could not suppress gloomy introspection about the evils of war, but faith helped them deal with uncertainty and danger. If the worst happened, dutiful Christian soldiers could count on reuniting with their loved ones in heaven. A sergeant in the 18th Mississippi who contemplated joining a church scanned various psalms for assurance of divine protection. Although “resigned to my dreary fate on earth,” he could find comfort in God’s promise to deliver the righteous from their enemies.⁷⁶

Deliverance would come in the Lord’s good time, of course, and how long that would be was anyone’s guess. The rapid Union advance to Fredericksburg had been followed by an unexpected lull. Frustrated by the delay in the arrival of the pontoons, Burnside appeared immobilized by uncertainty, his army stalled along the Rappahannock. The threat of Yankee shelling had frightened many civilians out of town, but then nothing happened. At first baffled about Federal intentions, Lee was gathering his two corps to counter the enemy advance. As frustration and doubt grew among the Federals, the Confederates struggled with supply problems while awaiting their opponents’ next move. The consolations of evangelical Christianity could not entirely assuage loneliness and family worries. For both armies the uncertainties of a winter campaign, the trials of camp life, and preparations for battle heightened anxieties. For the Federals especially, the scattered bivouacs along the Rappahannock seemed all too temporary, and the prospects of a fight still loomed very much in their minds.