welcome to the 26 annual pamplin park's. this is the redo from 2020. okay. so it should have been the 24th, but now it's the 26th. so and we were very lucky to get of our speakers back for this year. so good hand for them already for just showing. really appreciate. a couple of things in your pack that i want to mention. we are doing a fundraiser for the banks house that is and that's on in your packet. it's basic to fix one of the gutters that's there. we've got some water damage in the at the banks house and we need to get those fixed. and the estimated on that is about 40 $500 because again, we're working with historical homes and historic home restoration is always very expensive. there's a ticket and donation envelope attached to the flier. the winner will receive a free symposium for next year, 2023, which is a good line up. and we've also got some small prizes, some books to give place. those in a box on the registration. we're also trying to raise more money again for the will green scholarship fund. this is the second year that we started collecting for this. that fund had been depleted down to a point. we needed to build it back up next, we are we are very close to being booked for next year for school. so we're very happy about that. we're back. we are we're back this year, about 50%. and i'm hoping to be 75% of what we had back in 2019. so that's really good news next year. symposium flier there. be sure to sign up for that. and we are to have at the battlefield center as we do author books for sale starting tomorrow morning and registrations for next year's symposium and envelopes can be given to staff members at the registration desk. i want to thank c-span for once again doing our conference. this is the fifth year in a row for us and. we're very happy to have them here. i also want to mention one of our sponsor is the bank of south side. virginia is one of our sponsors for this year. also, please be sure to silence your cell phones and your fi and up to i get to introduce the first speaker we just went this afternoon to fredericksburg and did a tour with your colleague greg mertz, and that was a lot of fun. and so now we're a he tells me that we're hearing from the real guy that's going to tell us about fredericksburg. so we're very happy about that. francis agustin o'reilly has written numerous articles on the civil war and continues extensive studies and tours, wrote virginia. he's the author of stonewall jackson at fredericksburg the battle at prospect hill, the fredericksburg campaign winter war on the rappahannock, which received the 2003 nomination for the pulitzer prize in letters is currently writing a book on the 1862 battle of malvern hill. oh great. looking forward to that. and seven days battles around richmond. mr. o'reilly is a historian and park ranger at fredericksburg and spotsylvania national military park. let's give him a warm welcome. well, thank you for having me. this is great. i'm excited to be able to spend a little bit of time with you in fellowship this weekend. and we're going to be talking about lots of lopsided battles with overwhelming victors and egregious losers. we're going to explore a lot of them over the next couple of days. and many of them are going to have far more decisive of results and outcomes than what we're going to be dealing with at fredericksburg. but i dare say that when it comes to fredericksburg. there's nothing that nearly so much through time and memory as the battle at fredericksburg. when it comes to extreme sided events, it was lee's most renowned ring victory. certainly most one sided victory. it was one of several embarrassments to ambrose everett burnside. it was also an event that propel abraham lincoln spiraling towards. if you can believe it. it was also the countdown to a new year and a new war. and a new world. fredericksburg league as a whole was predisposed to be a civil war battlefield. the campaign for fredericksburg began a 160 years ago this very week, and fredericksburg has the dubious distinction of being located at. the midpoint between the two opposing capitals. so d.c. is just 50 miles north of the town and. richmond, the capital of the confederacy, is just 50 miles south of the town. and if you draw a straight line between the, you wind up in fredericksburg, and inevitably, so did the army's. in the fall of 1862. abraham lincoln asserted himself as commander in chief as he had never done before. he had to cajoled and begged army commanders to deliver on many a campaign. but in the fall and winter of 1862, he took the reins in hand himself, and for once, for the very first time, all principal field armies of the north were forward simultaneously in a winter campaign. this was a time we saw the army of the potomac. come back to virginia after, the maryland campaign. but it was also the time when ulysses grant was making his first bid to capture vicksburg mississippi and william tecumseh moving through the trans mississippi in on that very same objective where he could cooperate or coordinate with grant at a time union forces were in central tennessee, in nashville, heading south towards confederate forces in murfreesboro, where union commanders were slow. union commanders were sacked. don carlos buell lost job in tennessee and williams rose kranz took command of the army of the cumberland and the slowest of them was george brinton. mcclellan. and the day the fall elect shins, he found himself unemployed. he was replaced by ambrose burnside and it was a person that was handpicked by the president himself because. in the fall of 1862, ambrose burnside was aggressive, he was assertive, he was decisive, and he was quick. and he was one of the few union commanders who had experienced the rarefied air of victory in the east. so he had a pretty good resume for the job. but his because he was aggressive is the reason that he got the job. he was not mcclellan and abraham lincoln a victory that winter. there's a reason why all these armies were going forward simultaneously at this time. the preliminary emancipation proclamation had already been released on 22nd, a week after, and the actual proclamation was slated to be signed 100 days later on new year's day january 1st, 1863. if the emancipation proclamation was going to work, if it was to be enforced, it was going to rely on military victory. and that's why 19th century armies in, america were willing to risk a winter camp because of this political. when burnside was placed in command. he he inherited an army located in the middle of virginia, around warrenton, virginia. the order that placed him in command also demanded know what he intended to do with the army of the potomac. 135,000 men of the single largest most prestigious army of the republic. and the incredible thing is had a ready answer. he proposed to bring his army to fredericksburg using speed and surprise to capture that spot and use it as a springboard on a drive south directly against richmond. fredericksburg was not only on the direct route to richmond, but was also a strategic point where federal forces could not only threaten richmond, but by their positioning, could protect washington and behind them on top of that, fredericksburg also boasted a railroad, the rfp railroad, the richmond. fredericksburg potomac railroad, which was an all weather, all purpose means of communication reinforcement and resupply even in bad weather like winter promises. because of the name richmond and fredericksburg and potomac, even the federal high command could figure out it went where they wanted to go. burnside thought this plan out pretty well, even to the point where he ordered up bridge material or a floating bridge material to be waiting for him at fredericksburg so he could cross the rappahannock river without missing a beat. everything was based on speed and surprise. but the confederates, they also valued fredericksburg, jefferson davis, particularly so in the fall of 1862, because it had so many natural and economic resources that were yet untapped. the confederates. this area had not experienced war or the hard hand of war for all since the beginning of this conflict. had been brought in that fall and at harvest season. everything was a bumper around fredericksburg. according to jefferson davis. the idea of giving that area and falling back closer. richmond without a fight would be to deprive the confederacy of much valuable resources. so he wanted the rappahannock valley and fredericksburg defended the rappahannock also formed a wonderful natural, defensible frontier for. the confederates a lot easier defending the potomac river and northern virginia. it was a belt that ran across state of virginia. any union army driving south had to cross the rappahannock river and that would slow them down and bottlenecks them and give the confederates an opportunity in which they could massed their forces and crowd the union army up against that river so that they could not maneuver, bring their much larger forces to bear. the rappahannock was also strategic in the sense that 20 miles below fredericksburg the river got so wide and the tide so high, it would be impossible for the union army to bridge. in 1862, going upstream, you only have to go 12 miles above fredericksburg. before the rappahannock met the rapids and river and the difficulty of crossing one river is now magnified to crossing too. so the confederates only had to guard about 32 miles of riverfront. a wonderful choke point across the center, virginia. when burnside was given the approval to go forward, abraham lincoln put a caveat on it. henry halleck in chief of the army told burnside. the president says, your will work if pressed quickly. otherwise, not everything was about quick. they underestimated ambrose burnside because as soon as burnside got the green light to on fredericksburg, his army was mobilized and moving. within 24 hours. quick, decisive. aggressive. two days later, they arrived opposite the town itself, and they caught the confederates entirely off guard. there weren't 19 confederates anywhere near fredericksburg at that point. to stop the advance of 130,000 union soldiers. and yet the army stopped dead in its tracks. anyway, what happened? burnside showed up, but his bridges did. in fact, one of the great bureaucratic snafu. so the entire civil war happened. burnside's bridges were nowhere near fredericksburg. they were sitting in warehouses back in washington at that time. the engineers were the first ones to get a hint that they were needed elsewhere when they saw that burnside was, already in route to fredericksburg and expecting to meet them. they went directly to the war department, appealed to henry halleck, telling them there was no way they could possibly meet burnside in a timely manner. they were 50 miles from where burnside wanted them so they halleck to tell burnside slow down. if you're halleck and you have abraham lincoln's words saying, if you press quickly otherwise not, how can you then turn around and, tell the union commander to slow down? in truth, halleck couldn't find a way to do that. so he abdicated. he told the engineers he would do no such thing and that it was up the engineers to catch up, which is nice and blithe. but it's almost impossible. so engineers wound up having to take all their equipment and, put it into a wagon train and drag it across country to fredericksburg in some of the worst winter weather imaginable. it took them ten days to get to fredericksburg. and in the course doing that, robert e lee and the confederate army of northern virginia had ten days to figure out what burnside doing and block them. so when burnside showed up at fredericksburg, there weren't nine confederates there. but when the bridges show up at fredericksburg there's 17 8000 confederate s waiting there. so burnside campaign as he envisioned it was over. he never intended to fight at fredericksburg. he intended to it and then use it as springboard on richmond. now the battle for richmond would start right at fredericksburg 50 miles from richmond. so he tried to tell the president in his congenial way as possible that. the campaign was over. he wrote to the president, obtuse lee, that i cannot promise, as i once did, when i thought all the parts of the program would fulfilled. and we could read into that bridges certainly the president did, because the president's sent an equally obtuse answer back. you have bridges now. so what does that mean? it means the campaign was not over. and that they had to continue on. it is interesting to note with the of fredericksburg that ambrose burnside nor robert e lee wanted to fight their but their respective presidents insisted on it for. he not offer a promise of success. in fact, he could give a pretty good forecast that it would end in disaster if had to fight their way south for 50 miles to richmond in winter. for robert e lee, the idea of fredericksburg to protect supplies was kind of a diminishing return. now, albeit supplies were in valuable to the confederates, it's not to be, but four months later that there's bread riots in the streets of richmond. but at the same time the confederate presence fredericksburg itself was consumed. the very supplies that they were there to protect all of the supplies around fredericksburg were consumed within month. and so this was a temporary fix at best and probably thwarted e lee from picking a better spot where not only he could defend the road to richmond but could strike back with a counterattack and potentially damage or part of his forces. so burnside, under pressure from washington needed to get across the rappahannock river. he needed to press forward that winter at once. he dutifully looked up river and down river every likely crossing point for 32 miles. and everywhere he looked, the confederates had anticipated him and the road. so in despair, ambrose burnside sent his final plan to the president in december of 1862. he wrote that i proposed to cross it. fredericksburg bridge itself with the justification it will cause them as much surprise as it had as if they had crossed anywhere else. is that a good justification for putting the army of the potomac at risk? absolutely not. so all these long stories that we hear about ambrose burnside being kind of clumsy and stupid and oafish. does that seem to be borne out by such a ridiculous justification that they're going to be as surprised if i crossed anywhere else as here? they're not surprised anywhere else. they're not surprised at fredericksburg either. in fact, what i see is a different type of ambrose burnside, a burnside that is making a decision. he was telling the president this is the last plan and it's not a good one. it was time to end the campaign and go into winter quarters and look for better opportunities in the spring. instead, the president approved it. now, if we look at this from a military standpoint, there was probably an outside chance, maybe even 8 to 10%, that the federals pull off a miracle. but there's certainly overwhelming 90% chance of creating a disaster. and the army doesn't go. but if you look at it through abraham lincoln's lens, as you get ready to sign the emancipation proclamation, if army crosses, there might, be a 10% chance of that miracle. but if they into winter camp, that's a 100% sure guaranteed failure. and suddenly, 10% starts to look different. when the president said, go, ambrose burnside obeyed. december 11th, 1862, the union army was supposed to drive across the river as quickly as possible, using speed and surprise ties to lay down bridges, seize the opposite bank, and get in among the confederates before they had a chance to concentrate all of their forces from above and below with and surprise. perhaps they might even split the confederate forces. but that never happened because december 11th is one of the most unprecedented in american warfare. and things went sideways very quickly for ambrose burnside. for one thing, william barksdale, mississippi, a maverick officer who thinks outside the box, decided to defend the city riverfront in a unique fashion. instead of using his units with unique, he split them up into small cells or cordray's and split them in among the houses is to delay bridge builders. they were tremendously effective. but it also created an. interesting question in 19th century warfare. because the conventional warfare talked about units fighting and when they fight, they kill. and that's institutional. but when individuals and pick their targets one on one, how institutional is that when it is not part of their training and in fact, for a 19th century person that borders close to murder. but in the bigger picture, how do you overcome it for the union army? they were forced to fight, unconvinced as well. they bombarded the city trying to drive the confederates out of the houses and away from the riverfront. and this became the very first large bombard meant by the united states army on a populous city, in an active, fluid as opposed to a siege when, a city might become a fortress and is a military itself. that didn't work. the confederates were not driven away, and thus the union army had to try something else new. they put men in pontoon and ferried them across the river fire to physically drive confederates away from the riverfront. and was the first riverine assault under fire. american history. and when they landed on the fredericksburg side, that's our first beachhead. established under fire in our history. the great great granddaddy of d-day and played out on the rappahannock river in december 1862. and even as the confederates were driven away from the along the riverfront, they done. william barksdale says mississippians literally fought house by, house and block by block through the downtown. and this became the first urban combat in america. as you can well imagine. all these things were unprocessed. it ate it. and it had an incredible input on how people reacted to it. the commanding officer of the 20th massachusetts captain george massey wrote home, i scarcely knew what to do because there was no training would address this type of warfare. they were literally stuff up as they went. macy's men, the 20th massachusetts shown here in a dawn painting, entered into intersection on caroline street in fredericksburg and walked into a ring of fire that ambushed up. there were 307 members of that regiment and they lost over 109 of them in that one intersect. the 20th massachusetts was a hard fighting that had seen heavy action at bluff in 61 had been in the heart of the west woods at tatum, were going to be among the copes of trees at gettysburg and to bloody anger at spotsylvania. and they even attacked the stone wall at fredericksburg. but they claimed that was the hardest fight of their entire career. and they weren't wrong. that type of experience created a profound amount of frustration among the union soldiers and somebody needed to pay for this injustice. so confederates acting as individuals and using houses against but they couldn't the confederates because the confederates had gotten into the hills and if anything were even better situated than before. so they took out their frustration on the city of fredericksburg and they looted it from top to bottom, largely driven by not only their anger and but the idea that the war itself had now broadened. and the hard hand of war was meant to be felt. in 1862, the second confiscation act and the emancipation itself set a tone. it said that. that confederates in resistance federal authority is now target to could either be seized or eliminated and a town had clearly been used against them. so they took it out on the town, fredericksburg is the first major city to be ransacked. since the british burned washington in the war of 1812, it's first american city to be ransacked. americans. so december 11th saw a change in the very nature of combat. it upset soldiers, but it also upset timetables, upset plans and. it ensured that convention warfare, as ambrose burnside and robert e lee knew it would soon become anachronistic. and nothing was more anachronistic than. burnside's headlong assaults fredericksburg on december. 13th 1862, and yet those attacks that we know so well aren't really what burnside to be. battle of fredericksburg original. he didn't focus on places like marye's heights and a stonewall. he focused to the south, to the bottom of the map, to the confederate right flank, to where union under william buell franklin massed against wall jackson. the idea was the main attack. the union army would the confederates out of positions and interdict a union force between richmond and defenders. unfortunately, burnside's orders were very badly worded in which he had told a commander who has 60,000 men in nine divisions of infantry to send a division at least to seize the heights in front. and keep the rest of their forts ready to make a rapid movement down. the old richmond road, which doesn't go to the confederate lines, it runs to the confederate lines. it was a quixotic order that franklin wasn't sure that you could obey all the pieces, but he found himself duty bound to try. and he stuck to the spirit. or rather the. the letter of the law. instead of the spirit of the order. and sent a division to seize the heights with a second one in support and kept the rest of his force. about 57,000 men stationary a road. they didn't have to go down the richmond road. they had to be ready to go down the richmond road, which they had to be on the richmond road. so he had checked all the boxes as far he was concerned and as far as he knew he had been downgraded from being the principal attack to now being a diversion for an attack somewhere else. but burnside. made an interesting point that he didn't give 60,000 men to a general to make a diversion. you don't give half the army to somebody to make a faint. he said that was his main attack. and he intended it to be so. and at franklin knew his intentions. but it's hard to justify that. the order i gave to you. except for one interesting little fact. the generals don't all have the same maps, and some of the maps are different. this map is one that was used by a division commander, the third court named david bell burney. it's very similar to burnside's map and it shows us fredericksburg at the top of the map and union down along the old richmond road, which is known to them by alias, the bowling green road or the road to bowling green. and in fact, there's the legend of right on the bottom of the map. but the road of bowling green does something very interesting on, this map. it turns and it goes out to the end of the confederate lined. so when burnside wrote his order, he told franklin to send a division to seize the heights and keep the rest of all your force ready to go to the heights. so one general thought he had ordered 60,000 men to land on one spot and the other one read that he was supposed to use eighths in as a diversion simply because the maps not standardized. so when we look at these maps, we can why there's a disconnect. because in fact looking at a modern map, it's a little hard to see. but is a crux. y-shaped inner section at the bottom of it. and the inside one does go to richmond in bowling green, but up above it is yet another. there were two intersections, but the map maker for burnside only found out one of them. so he got the story. it should end. there, but it doesn't because there was a way to overcome this. and that's this gentleman, brigadier general james hardie is the person who could make understandable to everyone. he is the person who took the order from burnside's hand and put it into hand. he's the only one who knows everything about, what was intended and, what the situation revealed. so when franklin has question says this person should have answers, but he spoke up. now, by own admission, william franklin was as cross as a bear. by the time hardy showed up in his headquarters, so hardy was intimidated by this man and up cowering in one of the corners of the headquarters and trying to stay off the grid. so, franklin was left to fuss and fume and try to figure out exactly what the spirit of the order was. and it's easy to see why he chose to do what he did. in the end, burnside blamed hardy for failure. but the congress blamed franklin for not fulfilling the order and the army blamed for this disaster. all three of them are leaving the army after fredericksburg. but franklin. small assault almost won the battle of fredericksburg. it had several false starts at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. and noon. they made a breakthrough into. the confederate lines at 1 p.m.. burnside was winning. i know that's a hard statement to say. burnside was winning, but franklin failed to support. the breakthrough he failed to exploit the opportunity. and the union forces were in the breakthrough had to fend for themselves. stonewall jackson was able to contain the breakthrough and drive the federals back out of his lines by about 230 in the afternoon. it had been bloody and close. there were 9000 casualties, 5000 of them. union, 4000 of them confederate. 5000 to 4000 is pretty close to 1 to 1 and testifies not only at the savagery of the fight, but also how it could have. either way. but when we talk about fredericksburg today, we don't dwell on this particular of the story. this isn't the story of fredericksburg. for many people, the image fredericksburg is a much different one. people think of fredericksburg. in december of 1862 as confederate s on a commanding ridge marye's heights with infantry and a sunken road behind a stone wall at its base creating an impenetrable defense. and when we talk about fredericksburg we think about wave after wave of doomed federal assaults dashing themselves against the impregnable heights and getting pinned down in what they called a valley of death. that's the frederick story that is more often told. and in fact, burnside created rubric. but why? well, he opted to attack both of the confederate lines. he attacked the southern end to win the battle that the military action. but he attacked north end as well with the idea of pinning down the confederates there so he could keep them out of the fight to the south. in essence, isolate stonewall jackson from reinforcements and give the federals opportunity to win on the south end union attacks against to the heights never were intended to win. they really never had a chance. initially it was just a diversion in favor of franklin's assault. so when things started the south end at 10:00 in the morning, things started on the north end at 11:00 in the morning and the division of union forces out of the city in the division of general william f french or blinky french blinky, because he had a nervous in his eye. and the army such a caring, nurturing family that immediately made that his nickname. he attacked with three brigades, one stacked right behind the other as they went across a barren open plain of 900 yards of space. the first one up was general kimball. nathan kimball is, the only federal commander on this field who rightly can say that bested stonewall jackson in battle. i got garrett's attention right away with that one as he took his men into battle. he them his men some of the worst pep ever known to man. he told his troops to cheer up me hearties. this is something we all must get used to. we all have to die some time. and at least one soldier said that was very poor. excuse for me. i was happy to see the general die, but not me. the first assault was designed a particular purpose. confederates had skirmishes out in front of the heights, out across the floodplain, crowding the edge of the city. and the federals knew that. so the attack by kimball was supposed spirit their way out of the city as quickly as possible and attack those. and when the skirmishes fell back towards the main line, they were supposed to shadow them as hard as they could and use the confederates in a sense, as a literal human shield against confederate fire. that was the plan. but the execution was entirely different because when they went forward, they to cross a mile race a water course. there was a major obstacle about 15 feet wide and seven feet deep and had about and a half feet of water in the bottom of it. it slowed them down. then they had to cross a muddy plain that also delved uniforms, weighed them down to the where they slowed down the confederates got away and. that left the federals in the middle of an open field, no cover. and they were utterly destroyed. himself was severely wounded in attack. and this was his end of his career. the eastern theater of the civil war. as for his three brigades, william blinky french lost. one quarter of his entire force in just 30 minutes. he lost one third of all of his officers that same period of time. that was 11:00 in the morning at. the forces made an attack against the southern end of the field. they going to need support. what was going on? on the north end of the field. nothing. so the federals to attack it again. and this time it was the division of winfield, scott hancock. they went forward. hancock initially thought he was supposed go out in the field to support french's attack, but french have an attack anymore. his men were gone and so was the. french took moment to let hancock him instead of reinforce. that's not exactly the way the generals were supposed to do it. and according to some french's men, they were deeply by general hancock because chewed them out really well. at least one pennsylvanian said, i stopped dead in. my, my, my steps and listened to him because was amazed. i was unaware of the eruptive possible ease of the english language. but blinky french was also a person who could curse with the best of them and told his men to ignore. hancock because it was a blanking blanking hot day for december. if you ask him. and he was done with it. so french left and hancock attacked hancock. would have to do just what french did alone. he attacked three brigades that went across the field. and not one of his brigade commanders came unscathed. samuel kosciuszko zook was the first brigade to go out and he literally physically despaired of being able to do anything but die on the field. he wrote to friends just before you entered the field to tell them that was no way he could possibly survive this and that he wanted them to remember him as a soldier who tried to do his duty. he wasn't killed. his horse. and it fell on top of him. and pinned him or hurt him pretty good. the rumor quickly out that he was killed, but he managed wriggle free and stay out on the field. but by that point, his had ceased to exist and he had no one to command. when his brigade failed. the second one to go forward was that of thomas maher and his the irish brigade. he took them forward easily, identified normally with a big green flag. but they only had one. it fredericksburg look with the 28th massachusetts. everybody else went forward with sprigs of boxwood in their hats to distinguish from any other troops on the field. they went forward with 150 men in 30 minutes. there were 250 of them left with the flag. not everybody was killed. many were pinned down in front the heights. some lost in city of fredericksburg. in the end, they counted 48% casualty years. among them, general maher had an ulcerated knee that had he had surgery taken on it because it was wintertime. they thought they were going into winter quarters. now, he was out on a battlefield and aboard, got hit and it in turn smashed right in the knee. and from that point on out, he kind of lost his focus. he had decided that he could no longer. so he needed a horse and decided to turn around and go find horse. he never dawned on him to go send somebody to go get a horse. by the time he had a horse, he had no brigade. and then the third brigade was led by john c caldwell and men arguably got closer to the stonewall than though among who would argue about that or the other two brigades. each one of them had a claim that their troops got closer to the confederate line than anybody, but each of them used a different on how to say that. whose flag got closer? whose men got closer, whose officers got closer? and each in their own way was correct. caldwell was hit and done. he would survive. as all of these men would. to fight another. but at fredericksburg hancock's division lost all its brigade commanders. in truth, they had lost almost 45% of their men in just 35 to 40 minutes of combat. and now, unlike french's, they were trapped in the middle of open field, stuck in a tiny dip about 270 yards in front of the confederate stonewall, a swale that was their only protection trapped where they could not go forward, nor could they go back. the union assault on the south end at noon failed, so they tried again at o'clock and at 1:00. what's going on on? the north end of the field? not that. so they're going to have to attack again. this time it was the division of oliver otis howard. oh, howard. as many would know him as. oh, howard howard. and he brought in the front going into stonewall just a little further to the north to on hancock's front, rather than to reinforce hancock's front. he was supposed to coordinate with the united states ninth corps, who was supposed expand the battle south of hancock. but the ninth corps failed in this moment to rise to the occasion. they didn't mobilize or act. so howard went, forward alone. howard went in with three brigades and it was up to the ninth court to catch up. in the course of the attack, howard sent two of his three brigades straight at the stone wall. joshua owens, philadelphia brigade were the first ones to take it on and, wound up getting pinned down under before they knew what hit them. the second brigade was led by colonel hall. the folks who launched the riverine assault fire just two days before. now they found themselves repelled three times before. they were driven the ground with overwhelming. the third brigade was led by general alfred sully. and sully was left in reserve on the edge of the city as protection as an insurance in case the failure of the attack. howard's the first one to ever suggest the attack might not work now for sully. things were still not safe even in the rear of the three brigade commanders. he's only one who went down in a most unusual circumstance. union troops in front of him panicked and ran for their lives. the last he heard before someone ran him over was, don't stop me. i'm demoralized. hell. so so when howard failed, the ninth corps finally mobilized. they were slow to start because the division, it was supposed to go forward was led by samuel sturges and sturges's division was slow in moving forward because sturges was pretty slow in moving forward. the truth is, he never moved forward. all. he was drunk, so the division went forward literally, him in the process of drinking. he found a friend. one of his brigade commanders, edward farrow made a wonderful, uplifting speech to his men that when the fighting at its worst and the bullets were thickest, he would be there with them. and then he never left the town. in fact he and sturges sat and shared a canteen and tried best they could to hold up the wall of a barn while barn was trying desperately hard to hold them up to the brigades went forward without leadership. so basically went out on the field to lay down. they found it in. they didn't even try and not even trying. they lost 40% casualty years. this also brings up an interesting dilemma. the union had 35,000 men in the city of frederick per wednesday. it. but now that you've had french's assault and hancock's assault and, howard's assault and sturges's assault who's left back in the city, everybody else is trapped out in the middle of an open field with their units indiscriminately together and no one in command. there are only two brigades sitting in the city of fredericksburg at that moment. there are about 3000 to 4000 union forces to stave off the of a confederate counterattack coming across to stonewall and sweeping. that's swale out in. and if they did that union, forces could not possibly defend themselves. they would be driven into the city and then among the streets where it would divide them and weaken them even more, where confederates could drive them into river and ultimately doom the army, the potomac. it became a crisis. how do you prevent the confederates from counterattacking? robert e lee was the most aggressive exploitive commander in the and he had perfect opportunity ripening in front of him. so the answer among federal. was to keep attacking. so the united states fifth corps of dan butterfield were redirected across the rappahannock river and into the streets of fredericksburg and directly out onto the battlefield. the first division was led by of the most combative officers in either charles griffith, who had probably coolest of all nicknames in the army. he was called the king of the war dogs. you really can't that, can you? the dogs of war. our artillery cannons are the dogs of war. and charles griffin was the artillery instructor at west point when war broke out. so he was, the king of the war dogs. now leading a division of union forces out into the field. it became a question of what their purpose was. were they there to attack confederates and keep them on their side of the wall? were they there to attack the confederates and win? were they to just stabilize the union forces in a swale and? griffin's men look to griffin for direction and griffin was wounded. he was the highest ranking united states officer who was struck down at fredericksburg. so his brigades all of the above. they attacked stone. they tried to keep the confederates on their side of the wall. tried to stabilize those that were the swale and in the place. this was also joshua lawrence initiation to battle and he would memorialize in a wonderful article for cosmo in 1911. that would raise a lot of eyebrows and. it often has been quoted to us ever since about his first impressions of fighting. this didn't have any chance of success. but it really wasn't supposed to. it was supposed to stave disaster. and it bought a little time, but it didn't buy enough time. and the still stretched on. and the confederate opportunities were just magnifying each failure. so the federals had to attack it again. i got ahead of myself. so the division of andrew atkinson humphries to attack the stonewall. and in the process of this this is probably one of the most bizarre attacks at frederick's because this was a brand new division commander who had never led troops in combat in his life. and it was an entire division of troops that had been in battle in their lives. they were all pennsylvanians and they were a mix of month troops who and three year regiments that had all come into service at the time of antietam. they had heard a battle from afar, but they had not experienced one until humphries brought them into battle. and humphries was, probably the only commander in army, the potomac that was excited to attack marye's heights, even knowing the results of everybody who had preceded him because humphries was to get in to battle. battle was where glory had where promotion were won, and he was a highly ambitious officer with, as we talked about, anachronism arms. he had a very anachronistic idea of what combat was. so he did it with every kind of imaginary flourish you could put on it, where officers were told to go forward on foot because they were too easy a target. he insisted that they not only be mounted, but in front regimental commanders needed to in front of their men so that they could lead instead of brigade needed to be in front of them. and the division commander himself had to be in front of all of them. and as he turned to his staff, he said, gentlemen, presume you would want the privilege of accompanying me. and he gave the obligatory yay and went. to air attack was amazing. arguably they got to the stonewall than anybody. but they were also a shambles faster anybody and their attack dissolve faster than anyone's general humphries went down in the first assault his horse was out from under him and that's the only time he lost his because he had lost his favorite horse. charlie. charlie horse. and he jumped up and shouted every nasty thing he could of at the confederates for taking out such a beautiful life and, then calmly turned around and asked a captain he might borrow his horse, but in the process his attack had already dissolved and fell. humphries made it a point of honor to be the last one to leave, and he backwards so he would not be accidentally shot in the back and somebody would think. he was a coward. that was still not good enough for him. as he went back. he decided that he would whistle just so that people would know how calm and cool he was. so he picked a show tune at the time called gay and happy. that would show those confederates. and he went back and got his second brigade and tried it again. and this time they got to the exact same spot. they met with the exact same fire in the exact same results. and humphrey's horse went down again. humphrey son, a staff officer named henry was shot in the leg and a concerned father turned around to him and chucked him on the shoulder and said, i'm proud of you, my son, and envied him having a wound. i know what mrs. humphrey said about that, but that was the type of idea that humphrey's had. so when the second assault failed, he insisted on being the last one to go back, and he took the rear guard with him. and as they stepped backwards off the field, they sang and he picked the. and he picked one saying that i will be fat and greasy in the morning. what a strange song on a battlefield. but it was there to show the confederates that you cannot their spirit, even if you can break their assaults. if that was the intention, it failed utterly because the confederate commander on the hill, a fellow named robert ransom, said, we beat back every union attack. but the last one we sent them back, howling so wasn't exactly the best of all glee clubs, if you will. but it was not quite sunset. humphrey's men failed, which meant that the union army had to continue to pummel themselves. the confederate lines george washington gets division of the ninth corps knew that they next up and they were biting their time against the setting sun. at least one new hampshire officer said, i wish i could kick that -- thing down, because that was the difference between life and death. but the sun didn't set in time and they were committed. the first brigade that went forward was led by colonel rush hawkins and hawkins men bogged down, making their way through swamps and mud bogs, a spring and unfinished railroad bed before popped up right in front of the confederate stonewall and arguably were the closest ones to the stonewall because they came at dark and while there was a sliver, light long shadows had covered them. they, the confederates, were completely unaware of their until they launched forward with a cheer and confederates fired directly into their faces. the confederates didn't see them, but also the federals see them either. and a lot of the union forces like chamberlain's 20th main fired at everybody in front of them including rush hawkins. rush hawkins was sliced up in crossfire a friendly and fire. his attack never had a chance, and it fell apart in seconds. the last brigade was led by edward harland and harlan's men literally came forward into the darkness and as they dressed, ranks to take over for hawkins. harland ordered everybody to advance 20 paces and a line up and nobody obeyed the order. when he gave it more times, nobody moved. he thought, you want to follow me? then? and he took 20 paces in front of them, fell into a lake. i mean, he didn't see it because of the darkness that but the darkness also them from having to go any the attacks were over. now the confederates seemingly had a perfect defense but it was still a fairly costly one. the last time the confederates occupied. a sunken road on a battlefield it turned into a bloody lane at antietam. so these guys weren't exactly enthusiastic about this spot to begin with. a bloody lane at antietam had a cornfield behind. it they would allow you to escape and still didn't work for many them. this sunken road had a sheer face. barriers, heights, it. there was no leaving it and getting away. so confederates weren't exactly excited about it. the person who was excited about it was a brigadier general from georgia named thomas reed routes cobb tr cobb. cobb was a cantankerous, mean spirited person who didn't get along with anybody, hated every professional soldier, including robert e lee. but he was willing to concede that robert e lee might be redeemed when. he made cobb a general. but cobb, being so sure, fired about the merits of a sunken road and a stone wall for protection, clung to it. but it wasn't perfect. and in fact, cobb lost his because of it. cobb had a piece of shrapnel sinking into his left thigh and cut the femoral artery. he died 20 minutes after being hit. another confederate general in that same sector was john rogers cook. his troops were posted on the hilltop at the beginning of this battle. he went down to see cobb and got shot in the head for his effort. that wipes out a significant part the leadership on this part of the somebody had to step and take command of the confederate colonel mcmillan took over the sunken road and he was in the chest. so somebody had to come in as ringer and general joseph bradford kershaw of south carolina moved to the sunken road to take and he was shot in the arm. i see a pattern and the thing is to note that, of the 24 regimental brigade third and division commanders on this front, 16 of them got hit. so this was not ideal for the confederate command structure. but the end. not one union soldier even got to the confederate stonewall in that, left them only to fight over who got closest as the only thing they could take away from it. the casualties were appalling the south end of the field was 9000 losses. the north end of the field was 9000 losses as well. the difference was 8000. of were union and only 1000 confederates making this as lopsided a victory as e lee ever had. it also becomes a perfect symbol of how they want to remember this battle because only two things stand out in memory. the stonewall and the irish brigade. everybody talks about the stonewall, including confederates who are five miles away fighting for their. they talk about a stonewall for the union. everybody talks about the green flag in, the irish brigade, and how they supported the irish brigade or preceded the irish brigade, including men who were five miles away and never saw the irish brigade. but it was important because they were a symbolic, the stonewall, a symbol of absolute confederate dominion. they dominated this battlefield and nobody could ever that. and for the union that's the irish brigade set an interesting tone where men were complaining that this was just mere slaughter and murder. the irish were the first ones to say it was never about winning or losing. it was about doing one's duty, even in spite of the consequences. and no one could ever look at their casualties and doubt that they had done their duty. duty became the hallmark of the union experience as well as the tragedy of fulfilling it on other fronts. the union army didn't do much better. ulysses grant didn't get vicksburg that winter. his campaign cut short when confederates burned down his supply base at holly springs, mississippi, and tore up his railroads and forced him to fall back william sherman didn't get to vicksburg that winter. he defeated in december at chickasaw bayou. and william rosecrans. he was ambushed outside of murfreesboro along stones river, but he didn't retreat. and after several days, braxton bragg blinked first. well, he is braxton bragg and fell back. and union army is going to claim that as victory they held the field. all of these speak to an idea that lincoln's a victory did he get it and everybody is pointing to stones river and so does lincoln because he has to because when he heard of fredericksburg his first impression was if there is a place worse than hell i am in. it is the exact thing they would under mine the emancipation proclamation. but he told william rosecrans, you have saved the republic. so. if the if lincoln was hell, what did fredericksburg actually do. this resounding victory? the robert lee got in fredericksburg? did it end a civil war. no. did it? the army, the potomac? no. did it break the resolve of the northern people to continue this struggle? no. did it prevent abraham lincoln from signing the emancipation proclamation on january? no so. with robert e lee's most resounding, what does he get for it. well, it does something really dramatic and important. it polarized morale confederates found themselves absolutely unbeatable after fredericksburg. in fact, they felt they were sanctioned by a higher power the night after the battle. they were treated to an amazing light show, the aurora borealis. the northern lights rarely seen in this part of virginia. but it was on the battlefield. and the confederates wrote about it with enthusiasm about, heavens, fireworks, celebrating their, victory and union troops were under that exact same sky and they didn't write about it. in fact, i've only found two contemporary sources in 1862 there wrote about the aurora from the army of the potomac. one a fellow from maine simply wrote 6:15 p.m. aurora, and that was it? and that's pretty revealing because the confederate looks at the sky, thinks they see their future and the union doesn't because the union army is looking at something even more compelling than the northern lights. they were looking at that field at fredericksburg where they left 8000 of their friends and their family and their colleagues and their comrades. and they think they see their future. many of them despair and morale and desertion runs rampant. the aftermath of this. but if we can draw a lesson this the surprising is that the union army will learn from losing it. fredericksburg than the confederates will learn from winning because the confederates do think they're unbeatable. and that's going to lead them into some rash and foolhardy decisions in the future. it's going to lead them into attacks just like this one at fredericksburg at gettysburg and pickett's charge. now why did the confederates do pickett's charge? well, i can give you numerous military explanations it but jeff work can do a better one for me. but if looking for the most visceral answer of why that happened, we only have to look at robert e lee. lee met troops and said, i thought my men were in vince simple invincibles an unusual word in invincible the confederates robert e lee win many battles, but their losses are extreme. they are far from easy or invincible. there's only one spot the confederates have ever felt protected and so insulated and so that they can bandy a word like invincible around. and it's behind a stone wall at fredericksburg. so in the robert e lee just confessed that that one part of one battle shapes his experience and his perception of his army and their abilities. now for the union army, those that don't desert those that don't despair are no longer under the illusion this war is going to be easy or short and they have to steel themselves for that one officer after this battle of fredericksburg to his wife and told her, i don't know what the politicians proposed to do now and i don't care. i'm telling you this, i want to give those rebels one thorogood thrashing before anyone even talks of peace. and for that i will go a great deal. that was george gordon meat and that was the pie. i will go through a great deal to restore the union as it was. he never promised that to emancipate the slaves, never said it. he would lay everything the line. for one thing, one thorough, good thrashing because of the experience in fredericksburg it has a stigma that needed to be erased. so why is the union army going to focus itself? well, because they came to fredericksburg. they fought for many different causes and many different reasons. but when they left that field, they fought for one revenge, redemption. in six and a half months, george gordon mead is going to lead that army and start on their road to redemption and take them all the to appomattox. so what is fredericksburg remembered for its stonewall and the irish brigade. but what does fredericksburg do to the war. well it changes it doesn't change the war per se, but it changes the people who will change the war. and because of that, it becomes a truly monumental battle in and of. thank you. can ask for any questions we have from the audience. wait until. he brings the microphone down to. frank from frank, from what you're saying. and i suppose that it's all frank from what you're saying it seems that the confederates never had a a strong idea of counterattacking of marye's heights. so that all the union. advances or all the union counterattacks were really unnecessary because they confederates were never going to come down after them. am i right? it's an interesting insight that the confederates never did seriously contemplate a counterattack against that vulnerable spot in front of marye's heights i. it is interesting to note that the federals are keenly aware of their own vulnerability to the point where they think it's glaringly obvious to everyone and that robert e lee is very intuitive and they they concede that as early as december 1862. but from a federal standpoint is much different than a confederate standpoint, they the confederate standpoint, the swale front of them also poses a problem the other way, because every unionist that fails it brings more and more union troops to that swale all 270 yards in front, they to the point where they're paranoid that just the sheer magnitude of force there would eventually rolling forward and overwhelm them. so the confederates are more anxious about putting fire on that swale rather than getting to the swale because the confederates so much rifle fire they just right through their ammunition in no time all and need to bring more to the sunken road they can't get wagons into the road they can't have way boxes into the road so they have infantry units literally come down the face of marye's heights and join in at the sunken road i saw a couple of union accounts that left me scratching my head in early days where they talked about back seven confederate attacks at fredericksburg and i thought that was the exact opposite of what the reality is is that it's seven union attacks but in fact if we count every time the confederates charged down the hillside, it amounts to seven. so a federal standpoint, their paranoia becomes obvious because every time they see confederates towards them, they assume it's an attack. and when it stops the wall, they assume stopped it. so that becomes their life and death perception of how need to survive this. but both sides are keenly of their vulnerabilities and don't see the ability to exploit the other. so the confederates don't go out in that field. is that partly of their experience or their freedom well, antietam is very fresh in everybody's mind and experience is certainly going to haunt a lot of decision going on. i confederates have tried numerous on the field at antietam and all of them came with irreparable. so i could see like that. yes. another question. did lincoln ever accept his responsibility for forcing burnside forward? great question about abraham responsibility. and did he accept his responsibility and creating the disaster at fredericksburg? no, he did not. on a private level, he was very empathetic with ambrose burnside, but a professional level he came to his rescue or backed him up to the point where at one point. burnside literal. he made an ultimatum to president saying that either he gets 100% support in everything he wants to and that means henry halleck and edwin stanton need resign at once and people like joseph hooker needed to be cashiered from union army as. and the president said let me talk to my advisors about and burnside's is that if you talk to your advisors you won't do it and in truth he was absolutely right that afternoon he wound losing command of the army the potomac but the president then it as he wasn't fired he resigned burnside said that's absolutely false. he told the the henry halleck that that's a lie. halleck being the smarmy that he was immediately said, well, that's that's not my choice of words. you need to go talk to the secretary of war. go see stanton. and and when he went to stanton, stanton said, you're probably right, and we probably should change it, but of the good of the republic and that's all it. burnside backed down. so burnside never puts the president in a spot where he has to make a declaration pro or con because he recognizes that the president is in a precarious at the point where he's put out the simple most revolutionary and sensitive piece of the emancipation proclamation. he wasn't about to undercut that so in a sense he sacrificed himself himself certainly worked to lincoln's advantage. good question. good question. another question over. you said. it took ten days to get the pontoon from washington. the fredericksburg. could they have loaded those boats on a few large ships and sails them down the potomac, down the chesapeake and up the rappahannock river? it's a great question, and we can look at this a couple of ways. since the are using boating material, can't we use boats to move their boating material and bring it down the potomac and chesapeake and up to the rappahannock? number one, that probably work. the rappahannock itself, the chesapeake is still 120 miles of navigation, and most of it is very embankments. and it still has to get past 20 miles of confederates below fredericksburg, where the river so that even the lightest draft ships are unable to get to fredericksburg. so the rappahannock is. but you're on to something. could they move it down the potomac river to opposite fredericksburg to a place called a quiet landing, which is only 20 miles outside of of fredericksburg. and that's where ambrose burnside is going to establish a base right at the end of the richmond. fredericksburg and potomac railroad that sits potomac terminus. here's the catch 22 to have a base. somebody has to build a wharf. the people who build dwarfs are the engineers. the engineers are in washington with the boats. so they're to need to get down there to build something that. you can land at time. that was that was part of the problem. now, here's an interesting quandary if you want to look at this through military intelligence. if the engineers show up with the boats and did build a wharf. robert e. lee wouldn't have been caught off guard at fredericksburg. i know that doesn't sound right, but as soon as burnside's started moving, remember he moved within 24 hours of getting the green light from the president. lee was moving to. and the first thing lee said is that the likely place they would go is fredericksburg. so he started sending cavalry down there to go check out the intentions, the union army and the first giveaway, the tell for them is go check out a landing and see if they have a base when there is no base. that's when lee says well they can't possibly operate on that front. it can't be fredericksburg. so the catch 22 is if the engineers were there, lee would have been there to. but because the engineers fail, lee fails. then it becomes a big question, gets there first. yeah. so no easy for that. but in truth, the engineers themselves having to go overland and it takes them ten days to go 50 miles. and the big problem with this is creating a wagon. they wasted an entire day with the quartermaster department just trying to get horses and mules. and in the end they got about 280 horses and 500 wild green mules. what are wild green? they're not broken the harness. so they waste an entire day trying to animals that can't do this, so they waste yet another their day after that, trying to get teamsters who can manage wild green mules. and then when they step off on third day it rains and it pours to the point the buy they get, they're getting mt. vernon and going along stream called gravelly run. they make the confession they don't know if they're in the road or in the stream because they become the same. they went all day long. for 10 hours and made about eight miles the next day. they started earlier. they finished. later they got less miles. now, all of you have ever been to washington know that they replicate that nightly nightly. but for these engineers, things only got worse. they got to a called the aqua creek and they said that it was a raging torrent. by the time they found it in rain. so they waste an entire day taking apart their train to build themselves a bridge and then they waste another day taking down their bridge and repacking it. one of the engineers said that everything below the act kick was infinitely worse. what they had already experienced. so they broke up the train anything that would float was sent out to the potomac river at dumfries and somebody had to go run back to washington, go get tugboats. eventually they hook up and they go sailing down to atlantic. everything that wouldn't float. and read into that wild green mules had to still go overland. they were in the hands of a captain who didn't have anything but. a tourist map he bought in washington a couple of days before. so when he shows up in the army, the potomac, he's got a wagon train, but he doesn't have pontoons. meanwhile, they require landing a bunch of pontoons, like beached whales, and they don't have any transportation. it's still going to take a day to marry those up. so ten days have gone before. you're ready. use them. so who's responsible? i threw the question back. you? is it burnside? should he have checked these things? well, he did. his chief engineer, rufus ingles, immediately upon the army, starting to march wired the war department, saying. moving. checking on the pontoons. they will meet us right. and he got radio silence for. three days because halleck was just learning that he had dropped the ball and had not ordered the engineers to move. and that's when he told them they had to catch up. but he also went and did not tell burnside he wasn't about to give them excuse to act like mcclellan and slow down. so in the end, it's halleck who really dropped the ball from managing this. he gets away it largely because burnside lets him get away with it. an investigative committee from congress, the committee on the conduct the war asked this very specific question because knew halleck had messed up and they wanted to put him on the hot seat. but when they put burnside on the stand, testify, they asked him, did you mean to fight it? fredericksburg? no. did you mean to do pass through? and how did you mean to get across the rappahannock pontoon bridges? and did you have them? no. and who was responsible? and there is the question teed up nicely. and he answered, i never dreamed i was responsible for what they should have been in washington. did he give you halleck? he did not. so, in fact, the investigator committee immediately turned around and put halleck on the stands and confronted him with this testimony and said, what do you have to say about that? and in a most machiavellian way, halleck answered, well, i told he ought not to trust them in washington. and he ought to do it himself. what a brilliant. he ought not to trust them in washington. them is him him. but did he fall on his sword? he didn't. so they went straight back to burnside and put him back on the stand. and now we're in a he said he situation and he said this is what halleck said. he's laying it out for you. what do you have to say? surely you're pliable now. and burnside's answer. well, in hindsight, i. i could have checked on them, which a bizarre line, because he did check on them and he got radio silence. why did he say that? because he recognized that halleck was lincoln's. lincoln's advisor. and if he was undercut. but the radical republicans, the committee on the conduct of the war, would want to have more influence and sway over the president and the presidency. so he fell on the sword himself rather than give the radicals that satisfaction. so the radicals set out with an investigation to go after two people. halleck because they wanted to bring down the president bit and they wanted to go after franklin, who was a democrat and a mcclellan ite and a conservative, which was three strikes right there for that. but they added a third name by the time they were done, halleck failed. get the pontoons and created disaster. franklin failed to attack with his force on the south end and didn't fulfill the spirit of the order and doomed it to depart. and burnside because burnside's an idiot. now today nobody remembers halleck and the pontoons. most people have never even heard of william buell franklin. but in pop's popular world, everybody knows burnside's an idiot. and where that born. that was born out of the committee on the conduct. the war. because he wouldn't play ball them. so pretty pretty tough on his reputation. great questions. thank you. very good. well, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. i want to welcome you to andrew jackson hermitage to our fir