Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! - Hardcover

Rable, George C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807826731 ISBN 13: 9780807826737

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002

Synopsis

During the battle of Gettysburg, as Union troops along Cemetery Ridge rebuffed Pickett’s Charge, they were heard to shout, “Give them Fredericksburg!” Their cries reverberated from a clash that, although fought some six months earlier, clearly loomed large in the minds of Civil War soldiers.

Fought on December 13, 1862, the battle of Fredericksburg ended in a stunning defeat for the Union. Confederate general Robert E. Lee suffered roughly 5,000 casualties but inflicted more than twice that many losses — nearly 13,000 — on his opponent, General Ambrose Burnside. As news of the Union loss traveled north, it spread a wave of public despair that extended all the way to President Lincoln. In the beleaguered Confederacy, the southern victory bolstered flagging hopes, as Lee and his men began to take on an aura of invincibility.

George Rable offers a gripping account of the battle of Fredericksburg and places the campaign within its broader political, social, and military context. Blending battlefield and home front history, he not only addresses questions of strategy and tactics but also explores material conditions in camp, the rhythms and disruptions of military life, and the enduring effects of the carnage on survivors — both civilian and military — on both sides.

About this title

About the Author

George C. Rable holds the Charles G. Summersell Chair in Southern History at the University of Alabama. He is author of God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War, and Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism, and The Confederate Republic: A Revolution against Politics.

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Chapter 1
Armies

I can't offer you either honours or wages; I offer you hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Anyone who loves his country, follow me. --Garibaldi

Few people could be neutral about Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. Both loved and reviled, the "Young Napoleon"--as admirers dubbed him--curiously combined strengths and weaknesses. A superb organizer but cautious fighter, McClellan earned the respect, admiration, and especially affection of countless officers and enlisted men. Yet he was nothing if not deliberate, and he readily produced reams of excuses for inaction. His obsessive secretiveness raised questions about his willingness to fight and even about his loyalty. At once arrogant and insecure, he treated his military and civilian superiors with condescension and occasionally contempt.

McClellan regularly and all too indiscreetly questioned the military and political judgment of President Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, and Gen. in Chief Henry W. Halleck. McClellan favored a war of maneuver with limited objectives, fought by conventional rules, and even tried to protect civilian property. Whatever his private views on slavery, he opposed forcible emancipation. Nor did he discourage national Democratic leaders from using him as a cat's-paw against the Lincoln administration. A man of deeply conservative instincts, McClellan sometimes saw himself as God's appointed agent in the war, and with a conviction bordering on megalomania, he fully believed that the fate of the Union rested in his hands. This egotistic confidence, however, failed to mask deep fears about supposed enemies, whether real, potential, or imaginary.

Had he not saved the Army of the Potomac after the retreat from the Virginia Peninsula and John Pope's debacle at Second Bull Run? And had not his victory at Antietam been a great masterpiece and a vindication of his generalship? Unfortunately Robert E. Lee's army had escaped destruction; Lincoln and his advisers failed to recognize McClellan's genius. Halleck and Stanton had refused to provide the needed men and supplies. Worse, they had plotted to poison the president's mind against him.

As the warm days of early fall 1862 passed quickly with the Army of the Potomac still immobile, Lincoln abandoned his gingerly approach to the touchy McClellan. "You remember my speaking to you of what I called your over-cautiousness," the president wrote on October 13. "Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you can not do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?" Attack the Rebels' communications, the president urged. Strike at Lee's army. Obviously irritated, Lincoln closed his letter with a flippant remark that surely enraged McClellan: "It is all easy if our troops march as well as the enemy; and it is unmanly to say they can not do it.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807826731
• ISBN 13: 9780807826737
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 688