MILITARY ORDER OF THE LOYAL LEGION
OF
THE UNITED STATES, MOLLUS
By: Gregg A. Mierka,
State Commander, RI MOLLUS (2003-2007)
and National MOLLUS Internet Committee Chair (2009)
READ BEFORE
THE RHODE ISLAND SOLDIERS
AND
SAILORS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Volume No. 3
1st & 2nd Regiment
Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry.
Published By
N. BANGS WILLIAMS & COMPANY. 1883.
Copyright by N. BANGS WILLIAMS. 1882.
All rights reserved MOLLUS
Through the Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society
 Ambrose Everett Burnside |
 Regimental Chaplin ~ Historian |
 Ambrose Everett Burnside |
The honor to which Burnside had now been raised was considered, next to the command-in-chief, the highest in the army. When it was a matter which allowed of discussion, he had declined it, for he felt that his friend, McClellan, should be allowed an op¬portunity to retrieve the losses which had been suf¬fered in the Peninsular campaign. Doubtless had Burnside been summoned to Washington for consul¬tation, he would still have pleaded that McClellan should be retained in command—at least, till after the battle for which McClellan says in his report he was preparing, and which could hardly be long de¬layed. But the order was now peremptory, and could not be avoided. There was nothing left for Burnside but to obey. He appreciated the confi¬dence which the government reposed in him, and he understood the greatness of the honor. But he also felt the weight of the responsibility which had now come upon him. The sense of personal obligation in all matters of public duty was at all times very strong with him—never more so than now. It was a large command—in a letter to me at the time, he called it "enormous." He knew that many of the general officers were strongly attached to McClellan.
It was natural, too, that with all the personal good will which Burnside attracted to himself, there should still be a feeling, that a stranger, so to speak, had come to take the command, passing over those who were more closely identified with the Army of the Potomac and its career. There was also a modest appreciation of his own ability. But to decline the position thus accorded to him, and almost forced upon him, would be an indication of a lack of interest in the cause, and might even be interpreted as a dis¬inclination for the service, which Burnside did not and could not feel. Conscious of all the difficulties of the situation, he accepted it with an entire and pa¬triotic devotion to the public good.
The army was concentrated and halted for a few days around Warrenton. It was in a measure re-organ¬ized in three grand divisions—of two corps each— respectively under Generals Sumner, Hooker and Franklin. It numbered at the time, in the immedi¬ate front, 127,574. Besides these, about 300,000 men were distributed around Washington and along the upper Potomac. The entire force was under Burnside's command, but the new organization in grand divisions applied only to that part of it which was in face of the enemy. With this force, Burnside prepared for active and aggressive movements. His plan was to march upon Fredericksburg by way of Falmouth, crossing the Rappahannock at the lat¬ter place, occupying the town and the hills, beyond. Communication with Washington was to be had by way of Aquia Creek and the Potomac River. This was the first step. The objective point was Rich¬mond itself. With plenty of supplies at Fredericksburg "wagon trains can be organized," says the gen¬eral in his written plan, "and filled with at least twelve days provisions, when a rapid movement can be made upon Richmond, direct, by way of such roads as are open to us." As the bridges across the Rappahannock had been destroyed, pontoons would be required to cross the army. It would also be necessary to provide a vast amount of supplies—for¬age, horses, mules, beef-cattle and subsistence—and these should be ready at Fredericksburg, upon the arrival of the army at that place, or soon afterwards. The plan, after considerable discussion between Burnside and the authorities at Washington, was accepted. There seems, however, to have been some misunderstanding of the details by General Halleck, who, at that time, held the position of general-in-chief. The contemplated movement was evidently not so clear to him, as it was to the general who conceived it and was now prepared to put it into execution.
Burnside, believing that his plan was as fully un¬derstood by the President and General Halleck as it was by himself, set his army in motion. The advance started on the 15th of November and arrived at Falmouth on the 17th. Headquarters started on the 16th and arrived on the 19th. No pontoon train had reached the Rappahannock, and there was no intelligence of any. The abundant supplies that had been asked for were not forthcoming. Rain began to fall. The river was rising. The fords above Falmouth were impracticable. There were no means of crossing the army, and the commanding general, chagrined and disappointed, found that his plans were frustrated at the very first stage. General Lee, finding that our army had left Warrenton, made a rapid march across the country and down the south bank of the Rappahannock, and on the 22nd of November, his troops deployed along the hills in the rear of Fredericksburg. The road to Richmond was effectually blocked. Three days afterwards, on the 25th of November, late in the afternoon, the pontoon train, having suffered various misfortunes by land and sea, arrived near the general headquarters. General Daniel P. Woodbury, who had charge of the matter, had requested General Halleck to delay the movement of the army for a few days that he might make the connection sure. But that officer declined to hold the army back, and it accordingly moved, as I have stated, only to find itself stopped at Falmouth, with no further means of progress at its dis¬posal.
What should be done next was the question at headquarters. After the cold and snowy weather in November the temperature became more favorable for military movements, and it hardly seemed advis¬able to put the army into winter quarters. The pontoons were in camp and supplies had become abundant. General Burnside was unwilling to sit down quietly under the first failure. He wished to make another attempt to move HIS army towards Richmond. The chief obstacle in the way was the army of General Lee, strongly posted and fortified on the hills above Fredericksburg—a few regiments holding the town itself. After careful deliberation, Burnside decided to cross the Rappahannock and make an attack upon Lee's position. Lee himself seemed to have no inclination to take the offensive. His army was well established, and communication with Richmond was easy. He quietly awaited the attack. On the 10th of December, Burnside con¬centrated his army—in available force about 100,000 men—along the river front. On the 11th, under cover of a heavy bombardment, six bridges were laid—not without opposition from the enemy's troops in the town—and one division and two brigades were sent across to hold the town and the bridge-heads. On one of the lower bridges the Second Rhode Isl¬and crossed, leading the column. On the 12th, the remainder of the army—with the exception of Gene¬ral Hooker's grand division, held in reserve—was sent across. The battle was to be fought on the next day. The general plan was to make a vigorous attack with our left upon Lee's right, about a mile below the town, seize the road in the rear of the hills, if possi¬ble, and compel the enemy to move out of the earth¬works on the crest of the ridge by taking them in flank and reverse. If this movement should prove successful the right and centre were to move directly upon the heights and force the enemy into retreat. The plan of battle seemed both feasible and hopeful. Its success depended upon the celerity and vigor with which the opening attack was delivered, and the promptness and force with which it should be sup¬ported. By twelve o'clock, meridian, all the nec¬essary dispositions were made by General Franklin, who held command upon the left, and the at¬tack was made by General Meade's division, sup¬ported by General Gibbon's. It was gallantly, and for a moment successfully, delivered. The troops charged the enemy's position with great vigor, pierced the first, and very nearly reached the second line, breaking in pieces successively three brigades. Gen¬eral Gibbon's division hurried up in support. But now Jackson's corps of the enemy's army appeared upon the scene and our men were forced back. Re-enforcements were sadly needed, but reinforcements did not come. General Franklin had about 47,000 men—to speak Correctly, 46,892—with 116 pieces of artillery, under his command. He sent Meade with 5,000 men to attack, and Gibbon with about as many more, to support. On the call for reinforce¬ments, a brigade under General Ward was pushed forward. But it could do no more than help extri¬cate the troops in front from their perilous position. At half-past one o'clock Burnside sent a written or¬der to Franklin to advance with all his available force and carry the enemy's position in his front. The order was not obeyed, because, as Franklin says, "darkness would have overtaken us before we could reach the enemy." He even called the order, if he is correctly reported, "the last resource of all weak generals: an attack along the whole line." The movement from our left thus became a decided failure.
The attack made by the centre and right of our line, notwithstanding the discouraging result of the attack of the left wing, was well and bravely delivered. The ground was a somewhat broken plain and was swept by the enemy's fire. As the success of this movement depended to a considerable degree upon the favorable issue of the attack made from our left, there was little hope of victory when that attack failed. But the men behaved with the utmost gal¬lantry. They made most daring but inefficient charges upon the enemy's works, returning again and again to the attack. Through the short winter afternoon—long enough, indeed, to those who were engaged—the slope in rear of the town was a sheet of fire and a scene of carnage. It was like march¬ing up the glacis of a fortress. The earth-works on the crest, the stone wall at "Marye's," thundered with artillery and blazed with musketry. The Army of the Potomac—gallant, long-enduring and persist¬ent—was held sit bay till the sun went down and darkness shut out the fearful view. The battle closed with the disastrous defeat of our forces all along the line. Sumner and Hooker had done every¬thing that man could do to retrieve the failure of our left, but that failure was decisive.
Yet our troops held their positions, and Burnside wished to renew the battle on the next day. He would even- have put himself at the head of the Ninth Corps and stormed the heights in person. The column was formed und ready. But the three grand division commanders dissuaded him from the at¬tempt, and he finally—though with reluctance—gave it up. During the 14th and 15th our forces held the town, the wounded were sent to the rear, and a part of the dead were buried. On the night of the 16th, favored by storm and darkness, the army was si¬lently withdrawn across the river without molesta¬tion, and the bridges were taken up. A month more of pleasant weather passed, and Burnside, by no means discouraged by his failure, prepared once more to try his strength with the foe. The fords above Falmouth were carefully examined, with a view to crossing the Rappahannock and giving bat¬tle to Lee upon his left flank. Meanwhile, Burnside visited Washington and had a long, free and frank conference with the President, the Secretary of War and the General-in-chief, in which the whole situation was fully discussed. He offered to resign, but Mr. Lincoln would not listen to such a proposal, and he returned to headquarters completely assured of the confidence of the administration. Preparations were made for an immediate movement, in accordance with advice both verbal and in writing from General Halleck, and with his own disposition to actively en¬gage the enemy. It was decided to cross the Rappahannock at Banks's Ford and United States Ford, with a view turning Lee's left flank and obliging him to fight us in open field. The army moved out of its encampments on the 20th of January, 1863, reached the neighborhood of Banks's Ford—where the main body was to cross—about nightfall, and prepared to make the passage on the following morn¬ing. But soon after dark a furious storm burst upon the soldiers in bivouac. The rain fell in torrents, and soon reduced the roads to a mass of mud and mire. It was impossible to advance, and the move¬ment, thus stopped by the elements, was given up. The army returned to camp as best it could, and im¬mediately went into winter quarters. On the 25th of January, Burnside was relieved of the command and was succeeded by General Hooker, to whom he transferred it on the 26th. He immediately re¬turned to his home in Providence, where he quietly remained till the middle of March.
None of General Burnside's friends would wish to disguise the fact that his command of the Army of the Potomac was a failure in execution, if not in ad¬ministration. He did not himself desire to disguise it. His plans were good. They were substantially the same which Grant followed in his Virginia cam¬paign of 1864. The main difference was that Grant's lines of march were more in the interior than those which Burnside proposed. The objective point was the same. Burnside designed to inarch by way of Bowling Green, which would bring him nearer the coast of Chesapeake Bay. He hoped to take his supplies with him, or to be supplied from Port Royal and other accessible points until lie reached the James, when he could hold his communications with Washington directly by water. Had the pontoons been ready at Falmouth, had his supplies been sent there to meet him on his arrival, had he been able to cross the Rappahannock, as he intended, and seized the hills in the rear of Fredericksburg, in all human probability his movement would have been success¬ful. All the grand division commanders have ex¬pressed the opinion that he would have succeeded had not this failure occurred at the very beginning. There was a great lack of energy somewhere in send¬ing forward from Washington the bridge material. When the pontoon-train was fairly in motion by land, it suffered many mishaps. The boats that were sent by water had no wagons. A series of accidents and delays occurred, and the army was fairly stranded on the north bank of the Rappahannock.
After the first failure many of the subordinate generals seemed to lose heart in the enterprise. The winter was coming on and they did not wish to move till spring. They hesitated about attacking Lee in his strong position. There were discussions and bickerings among different portions of the command, which impaired the efficiency and seriously lowered the tone and morale of the army. There was a want of co-operation with the chief on the part of those who should have been most zealous and helpful. On the day of battle all these various influences were felt. It is not too much to say that General Franklin did not clearly understand what was expected of him, nor was he cordially or earnestly disposed to carry out the aggressive movement assigned to his direction. He had a grand opportunity, but he had neither the heart nor the mind to improve it. The man who could publicly call his commanding officer "a weak general," could not be expected to give him a hearty obedience, or a warm support. The well-planned enterprise failed. That it would have suc¬ceeded in more favorable circumstances and under the influence of a stronger will, the campaign of 1864 afterwards proved.
There is other evidence, indeed, which comes from one of the chief actors in the scene, and which car¬ries the weight of deliberate utterance and the assur¬ance of the highest soldierly qualities of character. General Meade himself, in his evidence before the committee on the conduct of the war, expressed the opinion that a victory would have been gained had he been properly supported. In an address which he made a few months after the battle, he said in the course of his remarks: "I speak of Fredericksburg, where the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps crossed and led the advance, unaided and alone, up the heights, and held their position for half an hour, while the others crossed. Had they been followed and supported by other troops, their courage that day would have won a victory." That the enemy's line was pierced, was very rudely shaken, and on the point of being broken altogether, becomes clear from the accounts which have been published on the other side. The attack of General Meade was severe enough to call for the presence and the utmost exer¬tion of Lee's best general, Stonewall Jackson, to re¬pel it. His enthusiastic biographer says that he seemed possessed by the, "genius of battle" in that hour of danger, "and his countenance glowed as from the glare of a great conflagration." Other evi¬dence of a similar character, and to the same pur¬port, abounds. It comes from both sides, and there can be but little doubt, that had adequate support been promptly sent forward from our loft wing, the fortunes of the day would have been different. A great victory was within our grasp.
But whatever may have been the cause of the fail¬ure, Burnside was nut the man to shrink from tak¬ing upon himself the responsibility of it. He sought no shelter. His magnanimity shone out more con¬spicuously than ever. "For the failure I am responsible," he says. When relieved, he said to the President: "Neither you nor General Hooker will be a happier man than myself, if he shall gain a vic¬tory on the Rappahannock." "Give your full and cor¬dial support and co-operation to the brave and skillful general who is to command you," he said to the army as he transferred his command. Nothing could be more generous, and nothing could be more char¬acteristic. Nor were these words the formal expres¬sion which the occasion seemed to demand. I happened to be at headquarters during the time when his mind was mostly exercised in regard to the many trying matters connected with his failure. I had with him the very freest and fullest conversation. He would call me up in the morning, an hour or two before the camp was astir, and we would pace up and down the lines of tents, earnestly and frankly discussing the situation of affairs. While he was entirely outspoken, he was always generous and kind in the expression of his opinions of the officers of the army. I cannot recall a single word of unjust disparagement of the soldierly qualities even of those who were known to be lukewarm in their support or lacking in their confidence in his judgment. I am sure that what he said in public was the ex¬pression of the genuine feeling of his heart. In the full light which beat upon him he was the same man as in the unreserved intercourse of private friend¬ship. For he had nothing to conceal. He had no private enmities to cherish, as he had no private wrongs to redress. The enemy on the other side of the Rappahannock was the enemy of his country and not of himself. It happened while I was at Falmouth that some scouting party brought in among other things an intercepted letter addressed to Stone¬wall Jackson, from his wife or some friend of the family, announcing the birth of a child. It was promptly forwarded to its destination under a flag of truce, and its receipt was kindly and courteously ac¬knowledged.
Moreover, I am well assured that there were not then, or afterwards, any feelings of personal injury towards those officers who had the most to do with thwarting his plans. He had contemplated a move¬ment across the Rappahannock at a point about six or seven miles below Fredericksburg, to divert the enemy's attention while General Averill with the cavalry was to make a raid upon the enemy's rear by way of the upper fords. This was in the last days of December, 1862. One or two officers, ob¬taining leave of absence, went directly to Washington, and, in an interview with the President, per¬suaded him that such a movement would be disas¬trous. The President was induced at once to tele¬graph an order that no movement be made without letting him know. The cavalry force had already started, and of course had to be recalled. Burnside was grievously disappointed, and immediately went to Washington (as I have said) to consult with the President and the Secretary of War. He then ascertained by what means his contemplated movement had been frustrated. It was a time when, if ever, a man would be justified in using the language of strong invective against those who had thus abused his confidence. But Burnside had an admirable self-control; and, though grieved and indignant, that he was hindered and baulked in this unworthy way, it was yet more on account of the injury that was done it to the cause than of the indignity that was put upon himself. I speak on this matter from personal knowl¬edge, for I was with him at the time he went to Washington. He made a warm protest to the Presi¬dent against such practices, for he was strongly convinced that they; were vastly prejudicial to the interests of the service. They were proofs of insubordination. But, what was worse in his eyes, they were unpatriotic and disloyal. His personal grievances were lost sight of in the greater injury that threat¬ened the Republic if such acts were allowed to go unnoticed and unpunished. It was ill this spirit that "order No. 8"—dismissing some officers from the service and relieving others from command in the Army of the Potomac—was written, but not issued. It may be accepted as the declaration more of a public principle than a personal intent. For what I would wish to emphasize is, that the keenest feeling that General Burnside had in the matter, was not personal. If over there was a man or a public officer that was able to sink his private feeling in his service of the country's interest and welfare, Burnside was that man. It was an admirable and a very conspicuous feature in his character, and it has been illustrated in so many ways and on so many fields, as to be stated here without a ques¬tion or a doubt ! It is a grateful task to turn from discussions of this kind to scenes of more brilliant and successful adventure. |
Ambrose E. Burnside, Page II, By Rev. Augustus Woodbury, is continued on the next page (RI MOLLUS War Paper No. Six; Volume No. Three) of these Publications. |
THE RHODE ISLAND SOLDIERS AND SAILORS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
IN EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THREE
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Copyright© 2009, Gregg A. Mierka, Rhode Island Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States
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