To them that fleeth cometh neither power nor glory.
—Homer
Early in the morning of December 14, with fog again shrouding Fredericksburg, war took a back seat to breakfast. For a captain in Sykes’s division, fried pork on a stick, hardtack, and a pipe filled the bill. Others refused to settle for familiar camp fare. A Sixth Corps colonel joined several friends in slaughtering two hogs and filling haversacks with fresh pork. In town, soldiers wolfed down their pilfered preserves, fruit, and hotcakes off fine china while sipping wine.1
The plundering of Fredericksburg continued. Souvenir hunters hauled off glass and crockery; slaves joined the looters. One delighted Pennsylvanian found John Milton’s Complete Works—including, presumably, “Paradise Lost”—lying in the street. Musket butts smashed mirrors, sabers hacked down candelabra, and molasses dripped down the tubes of a church organ.2 Throughout the day soldiers pounded on pianos, and one fellow decked himself out in “socks and satins that would have done honor to the Queen of England.” Alcohol lubricated the proceedings as soldiers sought escape from memories of yesterday and worries of tomorrow. “In Fredericksburg and having a bully time,” a survivor of Hawkins’s brigade breezily informed his sister.3
Yet waiting for orders took a heavy psychological toll. Lifting fog revealed Marye’s Heights bristling with artillery and infantry. As the morning dragged on, tension mounted, especially in the Ninth Corps, which was slated to lead the assault. As they peered toward the Rebel lines, men could hear the cries of the wounded from nearby buildings. But minutes and hours passed, and still no orders came. A rumored dawn attack by Sykes’s division had not occurred, nor had a midmorning assault. Some men received whiskey rations; others read mail; by noon soldiers were frying batter cakes.4
“I determined to stand my ground like a man and never flinch,” Charles Granger of the 16th Connecticut wrote in his diary. “I commanded myself.” Such self-control—a highly prized virtue in that era—was no mere stoic quality. It carried powerful religious overtones. Although the Sabbath passed largely unnoticed that day, pious soldiers sensed the Lord’s presence. Faith in God and thoughts of heaven helped soothe apprehension. A chaplain in the 79th New York read a prayer, joined fervently by men preparing for the worst. Simple pleas for deliverance and a few last thoughts of loved ones praying at home brought some comfort, but one soldier simply “waited for the hour of death.”5
In an odd and unexpected way, Burnside’s generals answered the prayers. Over breakfast Sumner, Hunt, and Willcox had decided the proposed attack would surely fail. How to dissuade their commander became the problem. Burnside, assuming for some unknown reason that his losses so far had been no more than 5,000, had prepared orders for the attack. With brigades already moving into position, he visited Chatham at 10:15 for last-minute consultations. As usual Sumner cut to the heart of the matter and bluntly told his friend, “General, I hope you will desist from this attack; I do not know of any general officer who approves of it and I think it will prove disastrous to the army.” Burnside was stunned. Ensuing discussions with several division and corps commanders revealed that all agreed with Sumner.6
After returning to the Phillips House and more discussion, by midafternoon Burnside had canceled the attack. The general was not well. His short naps during the day and early evening had not provided enough sleep. He felt nauseous after supper with Hooker, Butterfield, and several other generals—perhaps more from the company than from the food. For the time being the Army of the Potomac would hold Fredericksburg, but despite hours of debate, no other decisions had been reached.7 Burnside had wisely called off the attack, yet he had no idea what to do next. Such dithering could prove a costly luxury because his badly mauled troops appeared vulnerable to a Rebel counterattack.
Lee might indeed have counterattacked had he realized the extent of Federal losses or had he known that Burnside would not renew the assaults. Union artillery on Stafford Heights, however, still commanded the plain, and Franklin had more than a corps of fresh troops to parry any Confederate thrust. Moreover, Lee expected another Federal attack; information from a captured Yankee on Longstreet’s front had indicated as much. A new assault would have pleased Lee. So when the enemy remained quiet, he chided Longstreet, “I am losing faith in your friend General Burnside.”8
Ordinary soldiers sensed the enemy’s hesitation, and a few stouthearted spirits longed for a counterattack to drive the Yankees into the Rappahannock. Officers knowingly quoted Lee as saying he could easily whip Burnside’s army by noon. Throughout the day more fighting often seemed imminent because with the two armies still so close, it was hard to believe otherwise.9
Upon awakening, Longstreet’s men had still been able to hear the mewling of the Federal wounded in front of the stone wall. Sgt. Richard Kirk-land, Company E, 2nd South Carolina Infantry, could stand it no longer and asked permission to give them water. After some discussion General Kershaw reluctantly agreed. Filling as many canteens as he could carry, Kirk-land climbed over the stone wall. Once Sykes’s men realized what Kirk-land was doing, they held their fire and even cheered his bravery.10 Such acts bespoke a common humanity that hatred and relentless fighting had not entirely suppressed. They reaffirmed civilized values in the midst of a war that always threatened to destroy more tender impulses. All along Lee’s lines a Confederate soldier here and there would scramble onto the field to relieve the thirst of a wounded foe.11
More common, however, was the Confederate behind the stone wall and along the heights who kept his opponents pinned down most of the day. Porter Alexander could not depress his guns far enough to hit the closest Federal regiments, but Rebel musketry covered the ground. To men in McLaws’s and Anderson’s Divisions, not much seemed to be happening aside from what one South Carolinian termed “spiteful sharpshooting.” Losses were accordingly slight.12 The greatest danger to the Confederates—and not really that serious a threat—occurred late in the morning when men from the 3rd and 4th U.S. Infantry entered John Hurkamp’s tannery on the south side of the Plank Road. From the windows and a “loop-holed wall” they fired toward Rebel sharpshooters posted in several frame houses in front of the stone wall. This might have relieved pressure on other regiments in Sykes’s division but had little effect on the tactical situation.13
For the rest of Sykes’s men, December 14 brought unremitting misery punctuated with occasional danger. They were “unable to eat, drink, or attend to the calls of nature”—even a major’s official report recaptured the basics of the experience. At daybreak Rebel sharpshooters stood poised to pick off any Federal who raised himself off the ground; lifting a hand drew fire. Stretcher-bearers were hit; near the cemetery seven men were wounded crawling over a wall. With skirmishers drawn back into the lines, men lay flat on their faces only eighty yards from the stone wall. Some soldiers cowered behind dead bodies or wounded horses; others prayed quietly as bullets whistled around them. After lying for hours in one position, some desperate lad could stand it no longer and would dash toward the rear or sneak away for tobacco. Officers compiled casualty lists by passing names along the lines. Muddy water and a few hardtack made up the day’s sustenance; men reread letters or newspapers as the hours dragged on. By afternoon, soldiers simply had to stretch cramped legs and thus became more vulnerable to enemy bullets.14
To the left of Syke’s regiments, members of the 20th Maine took “grim satisfaction” in watching the overbearing Regulars suffer. But many of Griffin’s troops huddled together near the swale in even more desperate circumstances. This slight rise afforded only four to six inches of protection, so the soldiers had to flatten themselves tightly against the earth. Had the sun not come out, the grass would have remained wet all day. Bullets whizzed past regularly; occasionally a shell exploded. Not realizing that Alexander’s gunners were low on ammunition, some Federals wondered why Rebel artillery did not blow them off the field. A Michigan recruit’s diary reflected a common state of mind: “How would you like it . . . to lay there all day long—waiting—for what—thinking of what?” Memories of home, church, and friends kept passing through his mind.15
Some men could not withstand the strain, and despite orders not to return fire for risk of bringing on a general engagement, the more frustrated or foolhardy leaped to their feet and tried to nail some poor Reb whose head had popped up over the stone wall. They incongruously claimed to be keeping the Confederates pinned down. A Pennsylvania captain, likely inspired by the whiskey in his canteen, sprang up, grabbed the colors, planted them in the ground, and defiantly shook his fist toward the Rebels. A lieutenant followed suit. By some miracle neither man was hit.16
This sort of “bravery,” if such it was, soon ran its course, and men took shelter wherever they could find it. Two Massachusetts brothers turned dead comrades into gruesome breastworks, tucking their heads under their bed-rolls and pressing against the bodies. More fastidious fellows wrapped blankets around nearby corpses. Regiments thus remained on the field in these conditions for more than thirty hours. After a while men stopped counting the close calls; casualties slowly piled up.17
Danger stalked even the relatively fortunate troops who had moved to the rear or had been brought back into town. Rebel sharpshooters, for example, made crossing the street perilous. Worrying about stray bullets, a Minnesotan who had earlier felt ravenous could not eat a thing. “I lost a chunk of my Patriotism as large as my foot,” he admitted.18
Along the Confederate right, nothing much happened. Jackson waited for any sign of a Yankee movement, impatient to launch a counterattack. He could see that Franklin still had formidable reserves. Early and Taliaferro now held the front line with D. H. Hill behind them and A. P. Hill’s exhausted forces in reserve.19 Throughout the day an occasional artillery round was fired (sometimes with deadly effect); sharpshooters on both sides picked off the unwary or the unlucky. Skirmishing—some of Hood’s and Pickett’s regiments supported Taliaferro—was about as close as anyone came to serious fighting. In Early’s brigade some fools pranced about trying to draw Yankee fire and then ducked behind trees.20
One Virginian recalled having “a beautiful view of the Yankee army,” and indeed men on both sides spent much of the day staring across the lines.21 But it was all a matter of perception. The view did not seem so beautiful to Federals who nervously held their ground and later exaggerated their danger. Descriptions of “heavy” Rebel cannonading appeared in some Union accounts.22 Reports of “brisk” picket firing and “sharp” skirmishing, however, were confined to Gen. Joseph B. Carr’s brigade (Sickles’s division), where the Federals did suffer casualties.23
Like their counterparts on the right, Franklin’s frontline troops lay in the mud exposed to sharpshooter fire. The occasional artillery round made the men hug the ground all that more tightly. Hardtack, pork, coffee, and even a bit of whiskey helped them endure the ordeal. Many soldiers expected a Rebel attack at any time, but as a Rhode Islander put it, they could only lie there “awaiting events.” Pvt. Henry G. Milans of the 3rd Pennsylvania Reserves wrote home. He would carry a pocket watch into the battle almost certain to begin any minute, and should he fall, he wanted his son Joseph to have the watch, to hold it to his ear, and to consider its ticking final advice from his father. Joseph should love his mother always, be kind to his sisters, and make the Bible his “guide” throughout his life. As Milans heard cannon booming and the crack of musket fire, he explained that he was fighting so his family might “enjoy the blessing of a free Government and live under the blessing of a free Gospel and have the privaleges of education and a door open to eminance, welth, and happiness.”24
The Federals tried to add up the butcher’s bill and figure out what it all meant. Faces smeared with powder and sweat bearing sad and anxious expressions betokened once-naive young men who had matured quickly. Survivors in the hardest-hit regiments appeared disheartened, broken men barely able to comprehend how their ranks had been thinned so horribly. The Irish Brigade was a case in point. A Rhode Island corporal later claimed to have seen Meagher crying uncontrollably while Burnside tried to console him. In French’s division a New Jersey company mustered its pathetic band in a billiard saloon. Clusters of stacked, orphaned muskets provided a crude estimate of the dead, dying, wounded, and missing.25
Unfortunately many of the casualties remained on the field. Even without a formal truce a few men would sneak out of the lines to recover the wounded. Groups of soldiers from each side occasionally ran into each other and clasped hands, much to the delight of their observant comrades. By afternoon Jackson guardedly permitted a cease-fire. Aside from a Rebel picket shooting off the toe of a Maine recruit (accidentally, perhaps, though the Yankee’s friends had their doubts), the erstwhile enemies enjoyed the fraternizing.26 Trading, eased along by convivial whiskey, proceeded smoothly; tobacco, for example, was bartered for a northern illustrated newspaper. A hapless hog caught running between the lines became a rare fatality as blue and gray divided the fresh pork.27
To see men who had tried to annihilate one another mixing freely was an odd and, to officers, disconcerting sight. Some issued strict orders against conversing with the enemy. One Confederate playfully asked Brig. Gen. Robert E. Rodes, “May we not tell them that we whipped them yesterday?” Some taunting naturally occurred.28 Yet more was going on than idle banter. The shared experience of combat had fostered grudging respect. A Yankee surgeon admitted, according to one Georgia newspaper, that the Confederates “fight like the revolutionary fathers.” No finer compliment could have been offered. More disconcerting was the Federals’ discovery that their Rebel counterparts were “nice fellows” and could become “real friends.” Recognizing a common humanity implicitly made resuming the slaughter more difficult, and indeed the reason for the officers’ caution about such truces soon became apparent. Only the generals really wanted the war to continue, some enlisted men maintained. The privates could easily settle all outstanding differences among themselves.29 Such easy talk perhaps did not mean much, but with so many dead and wounded still lying about, who could blame these soldiers for fantasizing about their own negotiated peace?
During the brief truce, some men buried a few dead comrades, though they could hardly stand on ceremony. Given the delays caused by Jackson’s insistence on a written request and some untimely Federal artillery rounds, the wounded continued to suffer and die. During a more formal cease-fire the next day, the mood turned even more solemn. Soldiers showed much less interest in trading goods or exchanging pleasantries. Instead they went about the work with grim efficiency. After digging in the cold ground without proper tools, soldiers threw the bodies, some shrouded in thin blankets, into shallow trenches.30
Despite these efforts, death continued to assault all the senses from many directions. Empty buildings became charnel houses. Members of a Massachusetts battery bent on plunder burst into a room filled with dead Confederates. Corpses littered the railroad depot yard. But it was the appearance of the bodies, not their stench or even the staggering numbers, that left the most lasting impression. They lay on the ground contorted into every conceivable posture, limbs pointing in odd directions. Who could forget the armless, the legless, or the headless? Or the calm expressions on the faces of men shot through the heart who had died instantly? Or the sight of brains oozing from a head wound? Men on burial detail sometimes involuntarily shuddered as the gruesome sights overwhelmed their physical and psychological defenses. A New Jersey sergeant in the Sixth Corps especially noted the effects of shells: “the dead mashed into one complete jelly, their remains stringing over a distance of five yards.” The begrimed faces on many corpses made these dead soldiers appear “common” to an aristocratic officer such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. of the 20th Massachusetts.31 Perhaps men took solace in social conventions, or maybe they could not face the fact that these globs of flesh and disfigured bodies had once lived and breathed like themselves. The chaotic landscape of the battlefield gave the lie to patriotic slogans, naive hopes, and even brave deeds.
For both sides the overwhelming presence of death at first produced horror and revulsion, but soon Yank and Reb alike psychologically closed themselves off from such sights. They could never entirely suppress strong emotions such as shame and guilt and fear, but even the men on burial details somehow learned to cope.32
To make matters worse, scavengers had often stripped the bodies—rather like cleaning a hog or skinning a squirrel, depending on the preferred metaphor. A fortunate Confederate might find a new rifle or a full haversack uncontaminated by the owner’s blood. There was a raft of scarce items: a good overcoat, a warm blanket, or a sturdy pair of shoes that fit. An Alabama officer saw two barefoot soldiers standing over a Yankee who had received a mortal head wound, waiting for him to die so they could grab his shoes. One impatient fellow tried to pull a shoe off a supposedly dead Federal who suddenly stirred. “Beg Pardon Sir,” the Rebel said, “I thought you had gone above.”33
Such courtesy hardly characterized prevailing attitudes or practices. Some contemporary accounts describe a field of white-clad corpses, but others talk of bodies stripped naked. This ultimate humiliation for the Yankees—to be laid bare before their enemies—reflected the desperate shortages in Lee’s army, as did bodies dug up for the clothing. Other indignities, such as cutting off a finger to steal a ring, reflected only barbarity. Just as Federals had lost their moral compass in sacking Fredericksburg, so Confederates now foraged among the dead with an alacrity they would have once found shocking.34
That barefoot men would steal shoes was self-justifying, and most Confederate accounts stressed sheer necessity. A Georgia captain admitted that he would “pass among the wounded and dead as carelessly as if they were stones.” Although he and his comrades would readily share water with injured foes, they would also steal from the Yankee dead without a second thought. Yet such attitudes were still far from universal. As usual, Virginians blamed North Carolinians for any irregular behavior; a South Carolina volunteer claimed that only skulkers plundered the dead. At bottom lay the most familiar and frightening feature of war: dehumanizing the enemy. A cruel, barbarous foe deserved no mercy. The wretched bluecoats, according to one Confederate artillerist, had “burned houses and drove old men, women and mothers with infants at the breast, and little children into a December night to die of cold and hunger.”35
During the burial truces, the Federals discovered how their dead had been stripped. Some shied away from mentioning in letters home that even men’s underwear had been pilfered.36 But more often than not the bluecoats described what they saw in tones of moral outrage. Stories spread that unscrupulous villains had pulled coats off the wounded. Although he admitted the poorly clad Rebels needed clothes, a member of the Irish Brigade denounced their “barbarity.” Raging over such “diabolical” acts, a Maine recruit decided that slavery had “destroyed much of the finer sensibilities of the Southern people.”37
Not for a minute, however, would Confederates concede the high moral ground. How could these Yankee hypocrites object to a ragged soldier grabbing an overcoat when they neglected and abused their own dead? “They would pitch them in like dogs,” claimed one Georgian who had witnessed the Federal burial details. This was especially shocking because anonymous death terrified soldiers.38 But for many Confederates the moral clincher for the argument about relative barbarity became the Federals’ use of dead comrades as human breastworks. One Confederate soldier breathlessly wrote to his wife about how the Yankees had piled up the dead and thrown dirt over them to afford protection for the living. The press quickly picked up this theme. These heartless bluecoats, one Virginia editor declared, seemed more like “Mongol Tartars than Anglo-Saxons.”39 It was the height of irony: the treatment of the dead by both sides seemed to contemporaries a far greater outrage against civilized values than the slaughter that had produced so many corpses.
* * *
As the sun went down on December 14, the Federals settled in for another long night on the battleground. Mud stiffened in the cold air. On the streets of Fredericksburg, soldiers stoked their fires, fried their slapjacks, and listened to the fiddlers play. Inside the houses, men wrote letters or played cards by candlelight; others munched a quiet meal accompanied by a sip of whiskey. Outfits pinned down for a day and a half were at last relieved. Regiments from Howard’s division, for example, replaced Sykes’s exhausted Regulars. Both armies kept digging, strengthening their positions in anticipation of fighting the next day.40
Around 6:15 P.M. the sky suddenly began to light up. At first appearing below the horizon, the brightness intensified and spread across the northern heavens. Columns of light in varied hues shot up into the night sky, eerily revealing dead bodies still strewn over the landscape. Yankee and Rebel alike stood awestruck at the most magnificent aurora borealis most had ever seen.41 Confederates saw nature exultant in their triumph. This rare and spectacular sight crowned their victory and augured well for the future. The streaks of red, a Richmond newspaper declared, signified “the blood of those martyrs who had offered their lives as a sacrifice to their native land.”42 Observers on the other side hoped the red, white, and blue light portended success for the Union cause, but many disheartened Federals doubted it. The spectacular light only threw the Union dead into starker relief. As if to confirm such thoughts, the sounds of familiar hymns swelled across the battlefield that night—a suitable requiem to accompany the celestial display.43
The tense anticipation on both sides came to nothing the following day. Confederate artillery chieftains busied themselves moving cannon about and improving their positions. But the recent ammunition shipment from Richmond barely got dented. Gunners lobbed a few rounds at the enemy to drive off pickets from the swale and send sharpshooters fleeing from the tannery. Scattered picket firing and the odd Federal artillery round barely disturbed Longstreet’s troops, who dozed in their rifle pits.44
The Irish Brigade held a banquet in a small theater to celebrate the arrival of new regimental flags. A bevy of generals including Couch, Sturgis, Willcox, and of course Hancock headed a list of distinguished guests. Several toasts followed a fine dinner of turkey, chicken, and champagne shipped from Washington. Yet the brigade’s staggering losses on December 13 left every third place vacant and cast a pall over the proceedings. General Meagher nevertheless launched into a typically florid oration, though Rebel artillery shells soon ended the speech-making.45
Jackson’s front remained stationary. At some places along the lines, soldiers exchanged more or less friendly greetings. A few bursts of picket firing, an occasional artillery round, and stray bullets (some of which whizzed over Stonewall’s head during an afternoon reconnaissance) constituted the only dangers the Confederates faced.46 Around 3:00 P.M. a New Jersey battery fired on Rebels digging rifle pits, but that marked the extent of Federal aggressiveness for the day. Sporadic artillery fire, however, kept everybody edgy.47
Some men had the misfortune to catch a bullet on this “quiet” day. Luck ran out for a member of the 11th Pennsylvania Reserves who had survived Meade’s assault on the woods two days before. Wounded in the thigh, he underwent an immediate amputation. Six weeks later, after enduring a second operation, he died. For a few soldiers the psychological stress became nearly as deadly. A member of the 19th Indiana suffered a wound in his left arm, likely self-inflicted.48
Covered with dirt and mud, lying in woods and ditches, Rebel infantrymen waited and tried to get warm. Confederates still hoped the Federals might foolishly advance because they believed that southern independence might be secured on this very field. Yet as the hours passed, the bluecoats stayed put. One Virginian on Jackson’s front line got it right when he speculated that the badly mauled Yankees would not dare attack again.49
Many Federals spent the day anxiously waiting nonetheless. Incredibly, in outfits that had not yet seen much action, dreams of victory and confidence in Burnside persisted. Not yet realizing how badly the army had been bled on December 13, some still speculated that one great battle could end the war.50 But even for the naively optimistic, December 15 proved a harrowing day. No one wanted to be the last casualty of Fredericksburg. The hours of terrible uncertainty provoked some desperate praying. Men who had already seen action probably joined in, even as they bitterly concluded that the appalling carnage had accomplished nothing. Not only did the Rebs hold their superior defensive positions, but a Confederate counterattack appeared likely. “We must whip them or they will drive us into the river,” one Sixth Corps private sadly predicted. A battle-scarred chaplain in Humphreys’s division had an even grimmer appraisal: “We are terribly cut up and in all probability badly defeated.” The real mystery was why the Rebels did not destroy them, and so some soldiers easily credited rumors that the army was about to slip back across the Rappahannock.51
But Burnside had other ideas. During the night of December 14 and all through the next day, the Union high command debated about whether to renew the attacks, hold on to Fredericksburg, or retreat. Hooker, who commanded the Federal forces in town (approximately 12,000 men), had already pointed out his troops’ vulnerability to artillery. Moreover, he feared soldiers were becoming demoralized from all the plundering. Worse yet, signal officers reported that the Confederate left had been “greatly strengthened.”
Although depressed and apparently thinking about relinquishing command, Burnside consulted Hooker and other generals throughout the day. None of their advice was especially helpful. Butterfield favored flanking the Confederate right but still considered the James River the best route to Richmond. A few generals doggedly maintained that the Confederate works could be carried by storm. Sumner favored holding Fredericksburg, though for what purpose is unclear. Perhaps Burnside had come to realize that many of his generals were neither reliable nor loyal. “Political intrigue & jealousies in subordinates are greater enemies than an open foe,” one staff officer noted.52
No advice from Washington was forthcoming. On December 13 Burnside had dispatched Maj. William Goddard to consult with Halleck. Goddard must have reported on problems in the army’s high command because on December 15 Halleck wired Burnside: “You will be fully sustained in any measures you may adopt in regard to unreliable officers.” But the general in chief was guarded about future campaign plans and suggested that Burnside “make some use of the spade”—presumably to hold the town against a Rebel counterattack.53 A quick ride into Fredericksburg confirmed the uselessness of this suggestion. With a slouch hat protecting him from prying eyes but deep disappointment etched on his face, Burnside rode back across the river, where choking back tears, he finally issued the orders for the army to retreat.54
Throughout the day, ambulances had been crossing the middle pontoon bridge to pick up wounded and recrossing on one of the upper bridges. In addition to substantial foot traffic, there were also men being carried on beds, settees, boards, doors, and carts.55
Once the wounded had been safely removed, the generals worked feverishly to coordinate a complex and dangerous operation. On the Union left, divisions farthest from the bridges pulled back first. Bluecoats built great roaring fires to deceive the Rebels as they prepared to slip back toward the river. “Looks like a skedaddle,” a Sixth Corps lieutenant scribbled sourly in his diary. Dirt and hay scattered over the pontoons muffled the sounds of marching feet. Orders about noise were strict: no speaking above a whisper; bayonets, canteens, and cups were to be secured or wrapped in blankets to avoid jingling. The weather cooperated, too. Heavy cloud cover concealed troop movements, and a stiff wind blowing directly into the Federal lines carried sounds away from the Confederates.56
When it came time to move, officers awoke their men with unwonted gentleness. A New Jersey corporal who had fallen asleep in a fine straw pile was furious but soon grasped the wisdom of a retreat. With Doubleday’s division leading the way, Franklin’s men began the silent tramp back across the bridges. By 4:00 A.M. the last of the pickets were safely on the other side of the Rappahannock.57
On the Federal right the Second Corps led the withdrawal. A two-company detachment carried boxes filled with dirt to spread over the bridges whenever artillery crossed. Along the forward lines men noisily dug more rifle pits while their comrades crept back toward town. To make this charade realistic, no one told the soldiers they were covering a retreat.58 Dogs barked, and as the wind picked up, doors and shutters creaked. “It seemed as if all the hosts of hell were let loose in the city,” a New Hampshire captain shuddered. A few larcenous fellows still grabbed mementos as they stooped low and headed toward the bridges. Even in the cool air the exhausted men worked up a nervous sweat worrying about being left behind and taken prisoner. Uncertainty about what the generals might be planning heightened anxiety. By 10:00 P.M. Couch’s men had crossed the bridges.59
Elements of Butterfield’s Fifth Corps either stayed in line longer or had more time to explore the nearly deserted town. Those closest to the Rebels maintained the ruse of an army determined to hold its ground and kept digging until after midnight. Other men marching back through the streets entered houses to awaken sleeping stragglers. A few soldiers still paused to enjoy some last fruits of captured Fredericksburg; others evacuated buildings, sometimes moving toward the front to relieve the advance pickets. Men still stumbled over dead bodies. The sights and sounds that night, according to a corporal in Humphreys’s division, “made a feeling of dread creep over one.” But for most of the men, including those from Sturgis’s division who had been pinned down for nearly thirty hours, the ordeal appeared over at last.60
Some regiments, however, still had close calls—some last horrible moments—or even suffered a few casualties. Soldiers who at first had tromped toward the wrong bridges would arrive at the right ones just as the planks were being pulled up. Sykes’s division formed the rearguard, with men from Warren’s brigade sheltering themselves in rifle pits and barricading streets to foil any Rebel pursuit. Engineers had to reassemble bridges hastily as more bluecoats appeared on the opposite bank. (Some members of the 5th New York who arrived late were mistakenly charged with desertion.) The last of Sykes’s troops crossed around 8:00 A.M. An hour later the bridges had been disassembled; boats ferried over stragglers for another hour or so. Men from several regiments later swore they were the last to reach the Falmouth side.61
Only one regiment deserved that honor. Capt. John Lentz and a small detachment from the 91st Pennsylvania held a blockhouse where the railroad crossed Hazel Run. They never received orders to withdraw, and they remained there until 10:00 A.M. on December 16. A Confederate scouting party that had already captured some Federals approached the blockhouse, and one of the Rebels shouted, “Down with your guns, you sons of bitches.” Lentz coolly allowed the butternuts to get closer and then ordered his men to fire. Surrounded on three sides, Lentz’s boys had to dash back through streets now swarming with the enemy. Pvt. James Clark swam across the river for a boat, and the Pennsylvanians escaped—the last Federals to leave Fredericksburg.62
Despite some confusion over the number of troops in town and the timing of the withdrawal, the retreat came off better than anyone had a right to expect. The only hint of enemy interference was a few Rebel infantrymen sniping at the engineers tearing down the pontoons. After cutting bridges loose from the Fredericksburg side so they swung over to the eastern bank, the engineers spent the day packing up bridging material and sending boats upstream.63
Having escaped with their lives, Burnside’s men again faced the more mundane discomforts of a late-season campaign. Driven by wind, one of those cold winter rains that can depress the hardiest soul had begun during the night. Men awoke wet and chilled, some in tents flooded with water on top of rubber blankets that afforded little protection. The sodden clothes, blankets, and other essentials elicited what an Ohio artillerist dubbed “tall grumbling.” Soldiers who had crossed the bridges in the rain plodded up Stafford Heights and now struggled with the sloppy footing to reach their old camps.64 It was the final indignity: tramping along in the rain and slogging through mud after a humiliating defeat, having left so many dead comrades in enemy hands.
In the 12th Rhode Island a third of the men had no shelter tents; that night, in the same brigade, a soldier reportedly died of exposure. Some men had left their gear on the other side of the river, while others had settled down before clouds had blown in without bothering to pitch tents. Forlorn fellows wrapped in soggy blankets contrasted sharply with those rare exuberant spirits who got fires going, managed to dry out clothes, or even enjoyed a drop of whiskey.65
The wretched conditions hardly mattered to some men. Huddled near a pathetic fire, lying in a haystack on a knapsack pillow, bone-weary soldiers at last got to rest and perhaps for a time blot out the horrors of the past few days. Wind and rain could not disturb their dreams. Settling down in camp, grateful to be alive, seemed like being “home” again.66 That evocative word showed how the experience of battle could reshape a soldier’s orientation toward the world. The recent bloodbath had transformed once roundly despised, muddy camps into cozy sanctuaries.
Yet these miserable bivouacs inevitably added to the campaign’s toll. Some men had been sick going into battle, more were ill coming out of Fredericksburg, and now disease—rheumatism, diarrhea, and fevers—felled soldiers who had escaped Rebel shells and bullets. These deaths on the heels of the horrible carnage across the river seemed especially poignant and ironic. Even as regiments took stock of how many men had survived the battle, their sick lists grew.67
The fighting itself still sputtered, refusing to die out. Confederate artillerists hurled a few shells across the Rappahannock; the explosions disrupted breakfasts and knocked down tree limbs. Several regiments had to move out of range. In return, stray Yankee rounds picked off a couple of unlucky Rebels, though neither side inflicted much damage.68
Unfortunately the battle’s ghastly detritus demanded immediate attention. During yet another burial truce on December 17 and 18, parties of wary Federals recrossed the river to perform one of war’s most unpleasant tasks. General Wadsworth, who had just arrived from Washington, could only mutter, “My God, my God,” when a Confederate staff officer estimated that there were at least 800 unburied Federal dead in front of Marye’s Heights. From 600 to 1,000 corpses were thrown into two burial trenches, the vast majority unidentified. Like typical Americans intent on measuring even death, Federals and Confederates alike marveled at the numbers and the acreage over which the bodies were strewn.69
Hasty burials only compounded the battle’s horrors. Intent on a quick finish to the loathsome task, Federals wrapped the stripped bodies in thin blankets and sometimes tossed them into a trench three or more layers deep. Rude boards with a name scrawled in pencil memorialized a few soldiers, or a chaplain might mumble some words; but most men received no such honors. A black body servant and newspaper correspondent serving in Sickles’s division summarized the numbing effects of mass interments. So common had the grim work become “that the lifeless body of a man was looked upon as nothing more than that of a brute.”70
For a few Federals, though, their ultimate fate still hung in the balance. On the morning of December 16, Confederates began snapping up prisoners, including an entire regimental band from the 114th Pennsylvania that had been left behind during the night. All told, Lee reported capturing some 900 Federals. At this stage of the war both sides remained eager to exchange prisoners. Provost Marshal Patrick paroled some Confederates to their Virginia homes, and on December 17 after a flurry of notes, many prisoners were sent back across the lines. More than 100 bluecoats, however, ended up in Richmond’s Libby prison—including the Pennsylvania musicians and their brass instruments. Even soldiers lucky enough to have been paroled or exchanged right after the battle experienced anxious moments. Having heard all kinds of wild tales, Yankee prisoners feared being poisoned, but their reactions varied widely. While one captive tearfully begged his captors not to shoot him, another sneered, “Kiss my ass.”71
Across the river the appearance of ragged, half-starved Confederate prisoners both comforted and frightened their captors. Clothed in various odds and ends, the Rebels hardly looked like fearsome warriors. Yet a Cincinnati reporter who examined a group of “lank, yellow, weather-beaten” North Carolinians thought otherwise. They most resembled “wild animals” who marched tirelessly and fought with abandon.72 To gaze into the eyes of such men helped Federals understand why the battle had been so bloody.
While Rebs may have mystified Yanks, Confederates typically dismissed their enemies as coldhearted fiends who lacked human feeling. “The scoundrels ran off leaving the dead unburied,” a Georgian commented shortly before the first Federal burial parties appeared. Southern soldiers recounted for the home folks how the Federals had dumped bodies into the trenches. “They care no more for the dead than they would for dogs and brush,” one officer claimed. For the Rebels (and even a few bluecoats), tossing several hundred bodies into an old icehouse epitomized the war’s heightened barbarity.73
Dark thoughts, however, could not entirely detract from the sheer sense of relief the Federals felt at being back across the river. Even the old McClellan crowd grudgingly gave Burnside high marks on handling the army’s withdrawal. But men still had to grapple with what this sudden retreat meant because Fredericksburg’s staggering price cast a pall over everything. “O, Dear Mother Why my life has been spared the Lord only knows,” one New Yorker wrote home. “Our army has been badly whipped & thousands of firesides are made lonely and desolate.” Despairing soldiers speculated how this latest defeat would damage the Union cause abroad and at home. Some thought they had been damned lucky to escape; many others credited divine providence. It seemed little short of miraculous that the Rebels had not driven the army into the river; so, too, that the wind and rain had covered the withdrawal.74
Few men were as God-fearing as Lee and Jackson. Surprised and chagrined by the sudden disappearance of their enemies, they hardly interpreted it as God’s handiwork. For Confederates the second-guessing began immediately. Should Lee have attacked Burnside while the Federals still reeled from their losses? Geography and arithmetic weighed against that idea. The long Rebel defensive line would have been difficult to concentrate for an assault, and even then Federal batteries on Stafford Heights would have raked the town and plain. Lee could not estimate the Union casualties with any precision and had to assume that Burnside still had substantial reserves. Jackson’s corps had suffered serious losses, and even the relatively easy triumph over the Yankees had proved temporarily disruptive. “No one knows how brittle an army is,” Lee sagely remarked to Stuart. There were any number of reasons why the Confederates could not attack, but the truth is that Lee had been waiting for Burnside to renew the attacks and never expected the Federals to withdraw. A month later he jokingly remarked how eager Jackson had been to drive the Yankees into the river, but he remained sensitive about having miscalculated again.75
A few of Lee’s soldiers raged against a lost opportunity to strike another blow at the infernal Yankees, but many more cheering Confederate troops moved into town and began ringing church bells to celebrate their victory.76 With the Federals barely across the river, it was too early to assess the battle’s consequences. Yet a swelling pride began appearing in official reports—perhaps understandably, for the Confederates had easily thrown back numerous assaults and held the field. Disappointment in their enemies’ deft escape would quickly wear off.
On the other side of the Rappahannock, Burnside, his generals, officers, and enlisted men thought of little but the defeat and retreat.77 The Army of the Potomac had lost another battle, and the campaign had failed. Burn-side’s army had not been destroyed, but it had been whipped, every assault repulsed. Whole brigades had been shattered, and in the end the places of heroic sacrifice had been abandoned to the enemy. It had been a demoralizing debacle. Death and suffering seemed the battle’s chief legacies.