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They faced the most powerful army in America. Advancing in
battle lines up the hill toward them was the mighty Army of the
Potomac - more than 115,000 strong - composed of courageous,
well-trained combat troops under the command of General Ambrose
E. Burnside. For half a year, General Robert E. Lee’s Army
of Northern Virginia had been persistently hammered by this great
army, led by one Northern commander after another. Back in the
autumn at Antietam, the men in gray had escaped destruction by
this same blue-uniformed host. Now they faced them again on the
field of battle at Fredericksburg.
This time, however, they had a formidable advantage. They
held an almost impregnable line of defense, which was anchored
in a sunken road behind a stone wall on Marye’s Heights.
The Northern troops advancing on them now in a mighty mass had
to assault uphill over a long and open plain. Defending the Sunken
Road were troops from Georgia, North Carolina, and Kershaw’s
Brigade of South Carolinians, commanded by Brigadier General
Joseph B. Kershaw. Descended from a prominent Southern family,
Kershaw had been orphaned as a boy and had worked his way through
life with remarkable success as a self-educated lawyer, a local
militia officer, a Mexican War veteran, and a Confederate officer
distinguished by a rapid rise in rank to brigadier general. Despite
the numerical superiority of the men in blue at Fredericksburg,
Kershaw held his brigade steady and poured forth a terrible fire
from behind the stone wall.
Kershaw demonstrated “great coolness and skill,”
observed a fellow officer, and helped transform the gigantic
Federal assault into one of the North’s worst defeats. While
Southern forces in the road and along the ridges behind it would
lose a thousand men, the assaulting Northern forces would lose
almost eight thousand. Finally, after making one courageous charge
after another, the men in blue would give up. The Battle of Fredericksburg
would be heralded as one of Robert E. Lee’s greatest victories
- due in great measure to the valiant defense made by these sons
of the South. It would long be celebrated in the Southern homeland
as a triumph of valor in gray. |