Hess Earl J. Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864

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168 Fredericksburg

clearly spelled out in the fortiﬁcation manuals, and that Jackson was merely

uninformed about the art of ﬁeld fortiﬁcation. Through friendly advice such

as this, the Army of Northern Virginia was learning how to dig in.

≥≤

‘‘The world has never seen such a fortiﬁed position,’’ wrote Maj. Alex-

ander S. Pendleton of Jackson’s staff. ‘‘The famous lines at Torres Vedras

could not compare with them.’’ That was an expression of pride and of his-

torical myopia, for Wellington’s ﬁeldworks at Torres Vedras were far heavier

and stronger. The system Lee’s men built on the bluffs overlooking Fred-

ericksburg consisted of comparatively light ﬁeldworks. McLaws fortiﬁed his

division on the crest of the bluff with a mostly straight line of trench and

parapet, but no ditch or traverses. A one-gun artillery emplacement near

Howison’s Hill has a semicircular parapet that incorporates the connecting

infantry trench into its ditch. Ten yards to the rear and left of this emplace-

ment is a two-gun emplacement, detached from the infantry line, with two

semicircular and connected parapets and a ditch in front. Howison’s Hill

itself has a two-gun emplacement with retrenchments on both ﬂanks and a

deep ditch in front.

South of Howison’s the line descended onto the ﬂat land near the foot of

the bluffs. Here Lee’s fortiﬁed position expanded to front and rear as three

lines were either entirely or partially dug in to create defense in depth. There

was a fortiﬁed skirmish or picket line at the railroad embankment, the main

line along the foot of the bluff (mostly paralleled by the modern park service

road), and a few short segments of a third line and a collection of regimental

camps about 400 yards to the rear of the main line. Half a dozen covered

ways connected all three lines. Only here, on the right wing, was there

room to expand the position across the ﬂat bottomland of the Rappahan-

nock River.

Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett’s division dug in just north of Deep Run, a

wide and deep cleft in the side of the bluff. The line has a trench behind the

parapet but no ditch. Pickett’s position forms a salient several hundred yards

forward of the main line. A long, covered way extending forward of the

salient with a parapet that faces north leads to the skirmish line at the

railroad. There are two one-gun emplacements at the junction of the covered

way and Pickett’s salient. These emplacements are sunken and have re-

trenchments on both sides, but no ditch in front. A second gun emplacement

is designed to ﬁre both east and north. The ground in this ﬂat bottomland

has much clay, making for well-preserved earthworks, but there are also a

few rocks in the soil.

John B. Hood’s division was positioned south of Deep Run. He also con-

structed a covered way that extends several hundred yards eastward with a

Fredericksburg 169

Level Ground

Slope

Ravine

Pickett’s Line on North Side of Deep Run

Hood’s Line on South Side of Deep Run

Two one-gun emplacements

with restricted lateral aim

Covered way

Three-gun emplacement

with embrasures

Main Line

(

)

250 yards

Confederate Works at Fredericksburg, Built after December 13, 1862 (based on ﬁeld

visit, 1995)

parapet that faces north. Two shorter lines run north and south, intersecting

the covered way at intervals of 250 and 400 yards each, to create intermedi-

ate holding positions between the skirmish line and the main position. The

covered way also extends westward from Hood’s main line to connect to

some short lines and the regimental camps to the rear.

At Hamilton’s Crossing, Jackson’s engineers sank battery emplacements

for the guns that guarded Lee’s right ﬂank. Traverses protected their ﬂanks,

and the infantry trench was incorporated into the battery emplacements,

170 Fredericksburg

providing them with a parapet and a trench in front. Some of the one-gun

emplacements are twenty yards apart, while others are adjacent and touch-

ing one another.

≥≥

The Confederate defenses at Fredericksburg were among the more exten-

sive created by the Army of Northern Virginia during the ﬁrst part of the Civil

War. They exhibit a unique system of defense in depth with trenches and

artillery emplacements that are strongly and uniformly built. This is typical

of works planned by engineers and constructed at relative leisure by troops

taking direction from their superiors. Once the basic trench was ﬁnished,

there was no need for further embellishments such as obstacles or restructur-

ing of the design.

The Fredericksburg campaign was signiﬁcant but not crucial in the evolu-

tion of trench warfare. Hagerman believes that Lee ‘‘accepted the primacy of

the entrenched tactical position over the open frontal assault’’ following the

battle. In the future, Lee ‘‘used the frontal assault only when he had the

advantage of surprise . . . or when he believed dire strategic circumstances

left no alternative.’’ Francis Augustin O’Reilly also has asserted that Lee’s

army ‘‘became inculcated in the use of ﬁeldworks as a result of Fredericks-

burg’’ and that this ‘‘altered the course of the war.’’ Both scholars stretch the

point too far. Lee hardly lost his aggressiveness after Fredericksburg. He

indulged it at Chancellorsville, where he had ample opportunity to retreat,

and at Gettysburg, where his chief subordinate fervently counseled a turning

movement rather than frontal assaults. He more consistently adopted the

defensive after Gettysburg even though he often expressed a desire to attack.

Lee’s decision to dig in after the battle owes more to a general attitude

among Civil War commanders, which was an inclination to use earthworks

in the ﬁeld only if they intended to remain on the defensive. It did not mean

that Lee would automatically dig in or act on the defensive in future engage-

ments. The stumbling way in which Jackson approached the order to fortify

indicates how little thought and experience many ofﬁcers and men of the

Army of Northern Virginia had invested in the art of ﬁeld fortiﬁcation to this

point in the war.

≥∂

The campaigns of the last half of 1862 gave the Rebels plenty of experi-

ence at ﬁghting without fortiﬁcations. They grew adept at using existing

civilian structures and even the smallest inequality of the ground for protec-

tion. This was less often the case on the Peninsula or in the Seven Days. Even

so, the terrible battle of Antietam set the stage for the defensive battle of

Fredericksburg. That engagement on December 13 led to Lee’s decision,

readily supported by the rank and ﬁle, to fortify the bluffs after Burnside

Fredericksburg 171

retreated. By 1863 the Army of Northern Virginia was beginning to accept

that ﬁeldworks were a useful weapon in its arsenal.

The attack and defense of the stone wall position at the foot of Marye’s

Hill demonstrated the effectiveness of using a civilian feature as a ﬁeld

fortiﬁcation. The strength ratio between the Federal attacker and the Con-

federate defender was a staggering 7.5 to 1. Yet the assaults were repulsed

with a loss ratio of 4.5 attackers to 1 defender. And this occurred with a

feature that needed but little effort to become the equivalent of a breast-

work, far less sophisticated and complete in its coverage of the defender than

would be typical of the massive ﬁeldworks of 1864.

Burnside did not fortify his position on the east side of the Rappahannock

River after the battle of Fredericksburg, but the U.S. Engineer Battalion

began protecting the army’s supply line on February 8, 1863. The depot at

Aquia Creek and several stations on the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and

Potomac Railroad were fortiﬁed with earthworks and stockades. The ten-

mile-long line was fully protected by March 13.

≥∑

Defenses of Richmond

After Lee took the war away from Richmond in August 1862, there was a

persistent problem in ﬁnding manpower to work on the defenses of the

capital. Progress in their construction lagged by the new year, so Jeremy

Gilmer resumed efforts to round up African Americans as laborers. His Janu-

ary 13, 1863, request for the city of Richmond to provide 550 slaves was

poorly received. Gilmer urged Governor John Letcher to persuade the city to

comply as late as March 11. The Engineer Bureau had to proceed carefully in

any efforts to call up slave labor, for owners were always touchy on the sub-

ject. Lee wanted the city defenses to be completed in time for the spring cam-

paign season, and Gilmer bent every effort to get black laborers to the works.

In March, Gilmer issued a major call for slaves from twenty-nine counties

in Virginia. The number required ranged from 20 to 307 slaves from each

county for a total of 2,832. To soften the impact of this draft, Gilmer pointed

out that most of these counties had not yet fulﬁlled calls made the preceding

autumn. This draft would be for sixty days and, added to the unﬁlled quota,

would amount to no more than 5 percent of the slave population of these

counties. Gilmer also issued a call for 1,029 free blacks in twenty-four coun-

ties to labor on the defenses, a request Lee fully endorsed. These men were

drafted in exactly the same way as slaves, by notifying the justices of the

peace in each county that they were responsible for rounding up the men.

≥∏

Gilmer had to pay a price for acquiring this workforce. Mobilizing slave

172 Fredericksburg

and free black labor was far more complex than simply detailing soldiers to

do the work. The soldiers were a captive labor force with preexisting systems

of supply and command. Orders to work, along with detailed instructions

about what was to be done, simply had to be conveyed to ofﬁcers. To utilize

slave labor, Gilmer had to deal with owners who were reluctant to release

their valuable property to the government’s care. Slaves were exposed to

camp diseases and often did not receive adequate medical attention; they

could be mistreated or ignored by incompetent overseers, or they could run

away because of lax supervision.

A segregated system of support had to be created, for slave or free black

workers could not mix with white soldiers. They had to be organized into

gangs, tents had to be found to shelter them, food had to be supplied, con-

tract surgeons had to be hired to look after their medical needs, and white

overseers had to be hired to manage them. Political problems were nonexis-

tent in mobilizing free blacks, for they had no powerful spokesmen to inter-

cede on their behalf. Yet Confederate authorities preferred to tap into the far

larger slave population and called on the free blacks only when necessity

required it.

When the call went into effect, Gilmer was besieged with requests from

slaveowners for exemptions from the draft. He also had to deal with nu-

merous claims from owners for government compensation when slaves ran

away or died on the job. Fortunately for Gilmer, there was legislative author-

ity for impressment of both slave and free black labor, mostly by the Virginia

state government. The Confederate government and its departments readily

accepted this legislation and governed their actions by it, so there was ample

legal authority behind attempts to settle claims. The burden of proof lay with

the government agents to, in Gilmer’s words, ‘‘relieve themselves from lia-

bility to the owners of slaves that die, escape to the enemy or are injured’’ in

government work. In cases where slaves died due to ‘‘gross negligence on the

part of the overseers’’ while working on the Richmond defenses, Gilmer

readily compensated the owners. In all other cases, he gave the claims to a

special commission of three army ofﬁcers who gathered evidence to protect

the government from fraud in future legal action. Gilmer admitted that the

total amount of the claims was huge, and he advised waiting for congressio-

nal action to cover them if it was ever decided the government had to pay.

Thus there were many headaches associated with using slave labor. It was

by no means the most efﬁcient mode of building fortiﬁcations, but in many

cases slaves were the only available workers. They were normally used only

on semipermanent works away from the threat of imminent action. As the

largest Confederate defense system in the eastern theater, the Richmond

Fredericksburg 173

fortiﬁcations absorbed the lion’s share of slave and free black labor. Gilmer

hoped the works would be nearly ﬁnished before owners began to clamor for

their property. He informed President Davis’s staff that there probably would

be no need for more than a small workforce after April 20. Acting on public

pressure, the War Department arbitrarily decided that all slaves should be

dismissed from work on the Richmond defenses by April 10. The complex of

forts and infantry trenches that girdled the capital would never truly be

completed until 1865, but a mixture of soldiers, slaves, free blacks, profes-

sional engineers, and civilian engineer assistants, mobilized by city, state,

and national governmental efforts, eventually protected the city nearly to

the end of the war.

≥π

8:Chancellorsville

urnside committed a tragic error of judgment in attack-

ing Lee’s strong position at Fredericksburg. It was com-

pounded by a failed attempt to march around Lee’s left

and cross the Rappahannock in January, a good move

spoiled by unexpected weather that turned the ﬂank-

ing movement into the infamous Mud March. Burnside was replaced by

Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker on January 26, 1863, and the Army of the Potomac

was rejuvenated by improved living conditions, more frequent furloughs, the

introduction of corps badges, and Hooker’s infectious optimism. When the

spring brought good campaigning weather to Virginia, the Federals were

ready for another try at Lee. Considering the digging that followed the battle

of Fredericksburg, this next campaign was sure to involve ﬁeld fortiﬁcations.

Hooker devised a plan very similar to Burnside’s ﬂanking movement. Lee

had too many earthworks guarding possible crossing sites downstream from

Fredericksburg, so Hooker attempted to cross well upstream of the town. He

left the First and Sixth Corps at Falmouth to keep Lee occupied and took the

rest of his army on a long ﬂanking march. Hooker conceived of his campaign

as one of maneuver, not one involving head-on assaults on entrenched posi-

tions. If he succeeded in ﬂanking Lee, he hoped the Rebel commander would

evacuate the heights at Fredericksburg and retreat southward. Yankee hopes

for victory were bolstered by the knowledge that Longstreet had taken two

divisions to southeastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina to gather sup-

plies and possibly recapture some occupied towns. Hooker outnumbered Lee

with 134,000 men, compared with 40,000 Confederates.

The ﬂanking column started out on April 27 and made its way upstream.

Meanwhile, the First and Sixth Corps, under Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick,

crossed the river and established a bridgehead on the open bottomland

opposite Hamilton’s Crossing to divert Rebel attention. That same day, April

29, Hooker’s ﬂanking column began to cross the Rapidan River above its

junction with the Rappahannock. The several crossings here, including Ger-

manna Ford and United States Ford, had been fortiﬁed by the Confederates

with artillery emplacements and infantry works, but these defenses were

lightly held. The next day, Hooker advanced four corps from the fords to

Chancellorsville 175

occupy Chancellorsville, a key crossroads ten miles west of Fredericksburg

and four miles south of the junction of the Rapidan and Rappahannock. It

was one of the most successful ﬂanking maneuvers of the war. Hooker or-

dered his men to halt at the crossing so he could take stock of the situation

and determine his next move.

∞

The Federals were in the eastern area of a region known as the Wilder-

ness, which lay from 200 to 300 feet in elevation on the eastern edge of the

Piedmont where it borders the Coastal Plain. Most of the timber had been

cut for charcoal production, and the landscape was covered with a dense

second growth of small trees and brush. Two roads traversed the Wilderness.

Orange Plank Road was paved in many spots with two-inch-thick planks laid

on two rows of logs. It forked halfway between Fredericksburg and Chancel-

lorsville; Plank Road curved in a southwesterly direction toward the latter

place, while Orange Turnpike went directly west to Chancellorsville. The two

roads rejoined here and continued about two miles west before splitting

again at Wilderness Church. The turnpike continued northwest to Wilder-

ness Tavern, and Plank Road went southwest to Orange. The Wilderness was

a most unwelcome place to ﬁght a battle, for the thick vegetation severely

limited visibility and provided few places to deploy artillery.

≤

Hooker’s order to halt around Chancellorsville led most of his men to

construct some form of ﬁeld fortiﬁcation on the night of April 30. Brig. Gen.

John W. Geary’s division of the Twelfth Corps simply cut abatis in front of its

position for a distance of some 300 feet. The engineers laid out works on

other parts of the semicircular line, and the soldiers used axes and shovels to

build them. ‘‘To most of us this was an unfamiliar effort,’’ recalled Rice C.

Bull of the 123rd New York, a regiment in Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams’s

division of the Twelfth Corps. Bull’s unit was relatively new and had not yet

been under ﬁre. ‘‘But as farm boys we all knew how to handle both an ax and

shovel and by ten that night had a good defense in our front. There was a lot

of fallen timber that we gathered and placed lengthwise, then dug a trench

behind, with the dirt thrown over the logs. The trench was over two feet

deep, wide enough for the line to stand in and with the embankment the

total depth was ﬁve feet.’’ The green soldiers slept in their trench that night,

the ﬁrst line of battle the 123rd had ever established.

≥

Hooker’s chief topographical engineer, Brig. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren,

thought little of this defensive position. It was ‘‘a bad line, and had several

commanding positions in its front for the enemy to occupy.’’ Yet, he ad-

mitted, it was the best available. The next day, May 1, they continued to dig

in. The 123rd New York cut abatis in front of its earthwork until midmorning.

Then Hooker ordered a cautious advance toward Fredericksburg and neared

176 Chancellorsville

a low ridge that lay just outside the eastern edge of the Wilderness, near a

Baptist meetinghouse called Zoan Church. By now Lee was well aware of the

danger. He quickly dispatched Jackson’s corps to the area, and the Rebels

managed to occupy the ridge just before the Federal vanguard took it. Some

Confederates began to dig in as Jackson pushed ahead and forced Hooker’s

column back toward Chancellorsville.

∂

This effectively blocked any Federal assault on the rear of the Freder-

icksburg fortiﬁcations, but it appears that Hooker still believed that Lee

might evacuate those works and slip away to the south. Rather than try

to block him, the Federals dug in more strongly around Chancellorsville.

Hooker’s men used bayonets, tin plates, boards, pointed sticks, and their

hands if axes and shovels were not available. Some regiments dug two lines,

and everyone worked until the early hours of the morning. They constructed

a line six miles long, enough to accommodate two-thirds of Hooker’s infan-

try and thirty-one batteries. The left rested on the Rappahannock River one

mile downstream from United States Ford, and the right rested on Orange

Plank Road west of Chancellorsville. There was no natural defensive feature

here, where Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard’s Eleventh Corps held the right.

The modern remnants of Hooker’s defensive line have no ditch in front, but

the Federals dug a good trench unadorned by traverses, even at the angles

where those features could have been useful.

∑

The most prominent section of this line, held by the Twelfth Corps, was

the angle that protected the road junction at Chancellorsville. It curved

south, then west, and then north to make a half-circle around the crossroads.

The Eleventh Corps continued the line westward along Orange Turnpike.

The eastern and southern stretches of the Twelfth Corps line have slight

remnants that show a trench and parapet but no ditch. Despite the long

curves in the line, there are no traverses. On the right of the Twelfth Corps

line, just south of Orange Turnpike, remnants of the earthwork also show a

trench and parapet but no ditch. There are two features that may be termed

ﬁring bays; these are large enough for a couple of men and were made by

building short traverses across the trench. The right end of this line stops 100

yards short of the turnpike. An extension runs forward of the end, toward

the west, for about ten feet.

The Twelfth Corps continued the line north of Orange Turnpike as well.

Again, there is a trench and parapet but no ditch in front. A ravine lies in

front of the work, and in this generally low-lying ground, the line runs along

a slight rise that is both the natural and military crest. The Federals con-

structed six traverses at the end of this line, just before it crossed a ravine.

The traverses join the main parapet at an angle, and the earth is banked to

Chancellorsville 177

protect the men from an enﬁlade ﬁre from the right. There are a couple of

detached sections of works on the other side of the ravine, apparently sig-

nifying some confusion about how far the line should continue.

∏

Two Confederate engineer ofﬁcers scouted the Union earthworks that

curved around the road junction at Chancellorsville and reported them too

strong to risk a frontal attack, but Jackson still wanted to take the offensive.

When Confederate cavalrymen reported Howard’s right ﬂank in the air, he

and Lee planned a turning movement to roll it up. This was a bold and crucial

decision in shaping the course of the battle. Lee demonstrated that he had no

intention of giving up his entrenched position on the bluffs outside Freder-

icksburg and retiring south. He meant to ﬁght it out here, ten miles west of

that town in the confusing environment of the Wilderness, and hold the line

of the Rappahannock at all costs.

Field fortiﬁcations would help him. Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson posi-

tioned three brigades of his division between Hooker and Fredericksburg,

three and a half miles from Chancellorsville. Lee sent his chief engineer, Lt.

Col. William Proctor Smith, to help Anderson lay out a defensive line. ‘‘Set all

your spades to work as vigorously as possible,’’ Lee instructed Anderson. It

was the ﬁrst time that Lee ordered his infantrymen to dig in on the eve of a

major battle. They constructed what a Mississippian called ‘‘ample riﬂe pits.’’

The works were probably no stronger than the ones Hooker’s men had built

at Chancellorsville, and they were closer to Chancellorsville than the line

started on May 1 at Zoan Church. While Anderson and a portion of McLaws’s

division held this line, Lee would send Jackson and 29,400 men, accom-

panied by 108 guns, on a long ﬂank march. That left only 14,000 men and 24

guns to hold the Federals in check. Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early commanded

12,400 Confederates holding the works at Fredericksburg against Sedgwick.

Only through the use of ﬁeldworks, and blessed by Hooker’s caution, could

Lee take such a calculated risk as dividing his already outnumbered army in

the face of the enemy.

There are interesting remnants of the far left end of this Confederate line.

No evidence of a ditch or of traverses remains, but the line conformed to a low

ridge with sloping and often open ground in front. An artillery emplacement

on Anderson’s front was dug for one ﬁeld gun; it consisted of a semicircular

parapet with no ditch in front and no connection to the infantry trench line.

Brig. Gen. Carnot Posey’s Mississippi brigade held the extreme left of the line

as it crossed Furnace Road. The far left of Posey’s position was refused at a

right angle to the rear. This refused line ran straight, like the rest of the trench,

for a few yards; then the Mississippians dug zigzags for about 100 yards until

the line ended at a dry stream bed. Each zig and zag is about six feet long.

∫