The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock (review)

Anyone with even a passing interest in the Civil War could provide a brief synopsis of the Battle of Fredericksburg. Such a synopsis would undoubtedly revolve around some variation on three primary themes commonly associated with the battle: Lee's army was securely entrenched on Marye's Heights, Union forces were decimated trying to dislodge them, and Burnside was a moron. Frank O'Reilly's outstanding study illustrates just how much more there is to understand about this battle, particularly about the less dramatic and oft-ignored fighting on the eastern portion of the field where Generals Meade and Gibbon breached Stonewall Jackson's lines; an action O'Reilly views as the battle's most decisive. Until a recent revival of interest in the subject, the best book devoted exclusively to the Battle of Fredericksburg was one published in 1961, a fact that makes O'Reilly's work an especially welcome addition.

O'Reilly's emphasis is primarily on tactical movements, which he describes in great detail. One might fear initially that a minutely detailed description would quickly bog down. Not so, for several reasons. Frank O'Reilly has for many years been an historian and interpreter at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, surrounded each day by the natural and man-made features of the bloody contests waged in that area. He has had the good fortune to encounter almost daily as colleagues some of the brightest and most knowledgeable fellow historians of the war. He is steeped in the history that permeates the very air in that once hotly contested section of Virginia. The happy result of those circumstances, combined with O'Reilly's diligent research and fine writing style, is a first-rate study that will long stand as the definitive work on the Battle of Fredericksburg. As he skillfully weaves many insightful quotations into his narrative, his exhaustive account of successive attacks and troop movements takes on a life of its own, with each segment of the battle becoming at once a personalized struggle between real individuals as well as a chronicle of personal human heroics, suffering, and sorrow.

O'Reilly nicely sets the events in context with an incisive discussion of Burnside's rise to command of the army and his strategic plan for the winter campaign of 1862. He cites Burnside's decisiveness in pushing his scheme to move the army to Fredericksburg, correctly disputing Henry Halleck's desire for an advance along the Orange & Alexandria Railroad line. That decisiveness, says O'Reilly, "was also a liability, which led to tragedy" (p. 25). Burnside moved to Fredericksburg at a grueling pace only to find that the pontoon boats necessary for a river crossing were delayed. The tragedy began to unfold before the seemingly powerless Burnside, and O'Reilly's description of actions on the field reinforce the impression of a battle almost wholly divorced from Burnside's ability to affect its course. For his part, Lee considered the battle only half won. He defeated Burnside's assaults so handily that he was certain the principal attack had yet to be made. Lee withheld his strength in anticipation of a climactic struggle and was much chagrined when Burnside withdrew before he could wrest a decisive victory from the hapless Union general.

To round out his treatment of the campaign, O'Reilly also includes a chapter on the Dumfries Raid and Mud March, while an excellent epilogue sums up the battle's salient features and effects. A sample of those include the facts that Jackson and James Longstreet fought two separate battles, each of which illustrated their differing ideas on defensive battles; Lee afterwards concentrated his artillery in battalion formations and his army embraced the use of fieldworks; most Federal commanders with the exception...