BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Fredericksburg Natl Battlefield -- Marye's Heights

VA -- Fredericksburg Natl Battlefield -- Marye's Heights:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. FREDMH_080301_002.JPG: Sunken Road Walking Tour: On December 13, 1862, Union troops poured out of Fredericksburg to attack Confederate forces behind the town. The heaviest blows fell here at Marye's Heights. For eight hours, Union troops repeatedly charged the heights only to be slaughtered by volleys of Confederate riflemen occupying a sunken road at the base of the hill. The half-mile trail takes you down the Sunken Road, then climbs the hill and comes back along Marye's Heights, concluding at the National Cemetery. Those not wishing to climb the hill may return to the parking lot by way of the Sunken Road.
2. FREDMH_080301_006.JPG: The section of wall here was reconstructed in the 1930s
3. FREDMH_080301_007.JPG: Field of Battle photograph of the battlefield in 1863
4. FREDMH_080301_011.JPG: The section of wall here was reconstructed in 2004
5. FREDMH_080301_012.JPG: The Union Attack Begins: In 1862, the ground in front of you was an open plain stretching from here to the outskirts of Fredericksburg, one-half mile away. As Union troops left the town to attack Marye's Heights, they had to break ranks to cross a canal ditch, then knock down fences on an old fairground. For the last 300-400 yards of their advance toward the Sunken Road, they were virtually without cover. Eighteen Union brigades -- more than 30,000 men -- successively swept across the field. For eight hours, the killing continued. "Our men were slaughtered like sheep," recalled one Federal soldier. "The whole plain was covered with blankets, haversacks, wounded men and dead men... We stood it as long as we could, and were ordered to fall back -- when the whole brigade broke and run..." "Every face wore an expression of seriousness and dread..." -- Private Benjamin Borton, 24th New Jersey Infantry Of the many attacks made by the Union army at Fredericksburg, none was more famous than that of the Irish Brigade. Wearing sprigs of boxwood in their caps to remind them of their heritage, some men of the brigade approached to within 50 yards of the wall before withering under the Confederate fire.
6. FREDMH_080301_019.JPG: The Confederate Line: You are now standing beside the Sunken Road, part of a heavily used 19th-century road system that linked Washington, DC and Richmond. In 1862, Confederate riflemen fired from the road upon line after line of Union troops advancing across open fields to your left. (Houses constructed early last century now cover most of these fields.) A waist-high stone wall protected the Confederate riflemen; Union troops had no such protection. To your right is Marye's Heights. Nine guns of the Washington Artillery occupied the heights during the battle. By depressing the muzzles of their pieces, Confederate artillerists could scour the plain in front -- firing over the heads of the infantry here in the Sunken Road. It was perhaps the strongest natural position ever defended by Lee's army. "Our boys fired into the dense masses without the fear of missing & with a fair prospect of cutting down 2 at a time..." -- S.H. Walkup, 48th North Carolina Infantry
7. FREDMH_080301_020.JPG: Monument to Thomas R. R. Cobb, killed here by shrapnel.
8. FREDMH_080301_027.JPG: Here lived Mrs. Martha Stevens [sic] Friend of the Confederate soldier 1861-1865 UDC
9. FREDMH_080301_030.JPG: The outline on the ground shows the location of the Stephens House. The graveyard is behind it near the fence.
10. FREDMH_080301_032.JPG: Thomas R. R. Cobb -- The Battle of Fredericksburg -- The monument across the road marks the spot where General Thomas R. R. Cobb suffered a mortal wound. A brilliant Constitutional lawyer prior to the war, he left his practice to take up arms for the South. At Fredericksburg Cobb fought his first battle as a brigadier general in command of a Georgia brigade. He was determined to do well. When told before the battle that he must fall back if the troops on his left gave way, Cobb growled, "Well! If they wait for me to fall back, they will wait a long time." Cobb fell when a Union artillery shell crashed through the Stephens house, behind you, and exploded, sending shrapnel into his thigh. He would die a few hours later. Although Cobb was a Georgian, his mother had grown up in Fredericksburg. Her childhood home, "Federal Hill," stood on the outskirts of town within sight of Cobb's position (trees and postwar houses obscure the view today). Later accounts claimed that the shot that killed Cobb was fired from the vicinity of his mother's house. On the right, a portrait of Cobb states, Cobb served briefly as a delegate to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States before drawing his sword for the South. This 1862 photograph shows him as the colonel of Cobb's Legion. Erected in the 1880s, this stone to General Cobb is one of the earliest monuments in the park. This photograph was taken about 20 years after the monument was erected.
11. FREDMH_080301_037.JPG: The Stephens House: The foundation outlined before you marks the wartime home of Edward and Martha Stephens. On December 13, 1862, the house was caught in the vortex of Union attacks against the Sunken Road. Confederate sharpshooters fired from the house's windows and roof. The Union artillery shell that killed General Thomas Cobb passed through the house before exploding. Legend holds that Martha Stephens, unlike most local residents, remained in her house throughout the battle. She purportedly made repeated, dangerous trips to her well and tore strips from her own garments to bind the wounds of the fallen. Mrs. Stephens lived until 1888,; she is buried in the plot to your left. The house survived the battle but was destroyed by fire in 1913.
12. FREDMH_080301_041.JPG: The Martha Stephens marker is near the sidewalk. We're near the outline of the Stephens house.
13. FREDMH_080301_045.JPG: The Innis House
14. FREDMH_080301_049.JPG: Stephens Family Cemetery: Buried here are eight members of the Innis, Mazeen, and Stephens families, including the most famous of them all: Martha Stephens. Local children knew Martha Stephens as "Granny." They also remembered her ever-present apron, the pipe often clenched in her teeth, and her matronly form. But Martha Stephens was no typical "Granny." At a time when women rarely owned property, she owned no fewer than seven tracts, including a 92-acre farm in Spotsylvania County. For a time, she ran a saloon in her home. A local resident remembered her as "uneducated [and] too free and outspoken in what she said and did and how she did it." When she died in 1888 at the age of 68, the local paper called her a "genial spirit" and recalled her wartime efforts to aid the wounded during the Battle of Fredericksburg. "Her ministrations will never be forgotten by those who survive," the paper noted, "and companions of those who died will ever cherish her memory."
15. FREDMH_080301_051.JPG: Stephens Family Cemetery
16. FREDMH_080301_056.JPG: The Innis House is on the left. The modern neighborhood is on the right. The National Park Service has been buying up some of the houses here, trying to restore at least a little of the field that would have led up to the heights.
17. FREDMH_080301_058.JPG: The Innis House: This frame building, known as the Innis (or "Ennis") house, stands as mute witness to the terrible combat that engulfed this spot. Located along the Confederate line of battle, this small structure was marred by soldier graffiti and perforated by bullets and shell fragments. Confederate General Lafayette McLaws wrote that the house "had no space as large as two hands on it that had not been pierced." Although the family replaced the exterior clapboards, you can still see bullet marks on one of the vertical timbers on the right side of the house. More dramatic is the damage to the house's interior. Martha Stephens, who lived next door and probably owned this building too, chose not to replace the partition wall separating the hallway from the living room. The scars made by dozens of bullets remain as visible today as they were in 1862.
18. FREDMH_080301_072.JPG: The inside of the Innis House with the bullet holes
19. FREDMH_080301_079.JPG: The last-remaining portion of the original stone wall is on the left. The Kirkland ("Angel of Marye's Heights") Memorial is on the right.
20. FREDMH_080301_082.JPG: Original Sunken Road wall
21. FREDMH_080301_091.JPG: Brompton: "The pillars of the porch... were speckled with the marks of bullets. Shells and solid shot had made sad havoc with the walls and the woodwork inside. The windows were shivered, the partitions torn to pieces, and the doors perforated." -- Traveler John T. Trowbridge, September 1865 A home, a headquarters, and a hospital; each of these terms accurately describes "Brompton," the large brick house on the hill above you. Built around 1824, the building was home to John L. Marye, a prominent lawyer and businessman. During the Battle of Fredericksburg, the 3rd South Carolina Infantry took position in front of Brompton, while Colonel James B. Walton of the Washington Artillery made the building his headquarters. Seventeen months later, in May 1864, the house became a hospital for Union soldiers wounded in the Overland Campaign. "No available space was left unoccupied," remembered a Union surgeon. "The poor fellows just arrived had not had their clothes off since they were wounded, and were sleeping in blood and filth, and were swarming with vermin. They lay as close as they could be packed." Today, Brompton is owned by the University of Mary Washington. ... The gabled roof visible today was added after the war.
22. FREDMH_080301_092.JPG: Brompton
23. FREDMH_080301_097.JPG: The Original Wall: Standing here [the section that's nearest the Kirkland memorial], you can clearly see how the Sunken Road got its name. Cut into the base of Marye's Heights, the roadbed sits several feet below the grade of the surrounding hill slope. Stone retaining walls on either side of the road hold the banks in place. When the Confederate army arrived here in November 1862, it found a ready-made breastwork behind which to fight. At the time of the battle, the stone wall stretched for more than 500 yards along the eastern (left) side of the road. After the Civil War, however, large sections were removed. Today, just this one-block remnant of the original wall remains. Please help the National Park Service preserve this original section of the stone wall by not touching or approaching it. Confederate riflemen in the Sunken Road. By battle's end, the Confederates in the road stood four ranks deep. [Note: There are four sections of wall here now. The southern-most portion closest to the visitor center was reconstructed in the 1930s. The northernmost-portion near the Kirkland Monument is the original wall. The piece near the Innis House was put back up in 2004. The piece south of the Innis House was reconstructed in 2004 as well.
24. FREDMH_080301_102.JPG: The original wall segment, looking toward the Innis House
25. FREDMH_080301_104.JPG: The Ebert House and Store -- The Battle of Fredericksburg -- "You could smell the gingerbread and candy when you went into the store. It was utterly quiet, the only noise was the ticking of a clock...and an elderly lady knitting and rocking." -- A local resident On this corner stood the home of the Ebert family, Henry and Sophia Ebert emigrated from Prussia in the 1840s, joining a growing and prospering community of German entrepreneurs in Fredericksburg. The Eberts opened a small grocery store in their home on this corner, catering to travelers entering or leaving Fredericksburg along the Telegraph (Sunken) Road. The Eberts, their children, and their grandchildren lived in and operated the store for nearly 100 years. The Ebert house stood amidst a cluster of middle-class homes on the western edge of Fredericksburg. All of these families - Sisson, Ebert, Innis, Stephens, and Hall - lived lives largely disrupted by war. Before the battle on December 13, 1862, Confederate officers ordered the Eberts to leave their home. The family took refuge at Mrs. Ebert's brother's house several miles west of town. They returned days later to find dead bodies "all over the property" and their home badly scarred by eight hours of combat. The Ebert House as it appeared in 1927. The Ebert family owned the house into the 1930s. It stood until the 1950s.
26. FREDMH_080301_105.JPG: Outline of the Ebert House and Store. Brompton's in the distance.
27. FREDMH_080301_133.JPG: Angel of Marye's Heights: While the Civil War entailed immense destruction and tragedy, it did not always engender hate. For two days following the battle, wounded Union soldiers, caught between the lines, cried out for water. Though exposure to enemy fire even for a moment meant almost certain death, Sergeant Richard R. Kirkland of the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers tried to help. Filling several canteens with water, the young Confederate stepped over the stone wall to care for his wounded enemies. When Union soldiers understood Kirkland's purpose, they ceased firing at him and cheered. For nearly two hours, he continued his ministrations. Kirkland has since been known as "The Angel of Marye's Heights." He died in battle at Chickamauga, Georgia, in September 1863. Richard Kirkland was just 19 years old when he performed his heroic deed.
28. FREDMH_080301_136.JPG: This white cat showed up and spent some time with me, including a visit to my lap.
29. FREDMH_080301_165.JPG: "The Killing Fields": The view, taken a mile behind you, shows the vast open space in front of Marye's Heights only months after the December 1862 battle. Union troops crossed the plain between the town (in the foreground) and Marye's Heights. Some attackers advanced to within about 80 yards of the Sunken Road, and a few got as close as 40 yards. More than 7,500 Union troops fell killed or wounded in the span of the photograph, on the ground just behind you. The photo shows clearly both the stark nature of the battlefield and several prominent landmarks., Most important was the Stratton House, the solitary brick building at the right of the image, which gave cover to hundreds of Union soldiers. The Marye House and the Innis House (both still standing), as well as the Ebert House are also clearly seen. Today, most of the open space in the image is covered by an early 20th-century neighborhood.
30. FREDMH_080301_192.JPG: Confederates on the Ridge: "What chance had flesh and blood to carry by storm such a position, garrisoned too as it was with veteran soldiers? Not one chance in a million." -- Alexander Hunter, 17th Virginia Infantry. At noon, December 13, 1862, the first of nine Union divisions poured out of Fredericksburg to attack a Georgia brigade that occupied the Sunken Road below. "How beautiful they came on!" wrote an admiring Southerner. "Their bright bayonets glistening in the sunlight made the line look like a huge serpent of blue and steel." As the Union attacks continued, three Carolina brigades crossed this shell-swept plateau to go to the Georgians' support. Some of the advancing Southerners halted here on the exposed brow of the hill to fire at the enemy below. Others dashed down its forward slopes and joined the Georgians in the road. By mid-afternoon, 6,000 Confederate soldiers crowded the heights and the Sunken Road. One thousand were casualties before the day ended, half of them here on this ridge.
31. FREDMH_080301_200.JPG: This house, located atop Marye's Heights, is the Richardson House which was built after the war.
32. FREDMH_080301_205.JPG: The Willis Hill Buildings: In December 1862, Confederate artillery on this hill rained shot and shell on attacking Union soldiers advancing out of Fredericksburg. Next to the guns was a small brick building, one of three that then occupied this part of the heights. "The little brick house, which was white at the beginning of the battle, was perfectly red with bullet-marks at its close," wrote one Confederate. "There was an old cooking-stove in front of the house. The balls striking it kept up a perpetual 'bing, bing,' equalling the varied notes of a hand-organ." This 1864 photograph, taken from this spot, shows the Willis Hill buildings in ruins -- wrecked by Union artillery during the fighting here. Confederate earthworks, now gone, creased the heights.
33. FREDMH_080301_206.JPG: Confederate Artillery: Artillery was an effective weapon, particularly when used in defensive combat. Nowhere was that demonstrated more clearly than here on Marye's Heights, where nine guns of the Washington Artillery shattered the ranks of the oncoming Union army. "The shells fell thick and fast, exploding with deafening roar right in our midst. Shattered, torn and bleeding, our column still pushed on," wrote one Union soldier. Toward sunset, the Washington Artillery's ammunition ran low and the battalion retired to safety. Colonel Edward Porter Alexander's reserve artillery galloped up from the rear to take its place. Mistaking the Washington Artillery's withdrawal for a general Confederate retreat, Union forces again pressed toward the heights, only to be greeted by the blasts of Alexander's fresh guns. The Union battle lines dissolved in the growing darkness.
34. FREDMH_080301_209.JPG: Marye's Heights looking into Fredericksburg
35. FREDMH_080301_217.JPG: The Willis Hill Cemetery: "There is a private cemetery on the crest, surrounded by a brick wall. Burnside's artillery had not spared it. I looked over the wall, which was totally smashed in places, and saw the overthrown monuments and broken tombstones lying on the ground." -- John T. Trowbridge, 1865 This quiet hilltop graveyard, dating to the mid-eighteenth century, sheltered Confederate soldiers during the Battle of Fredericksburg. Medical personnel treated wounded soldiers behind its walls, and at least one Southern regiment paused here before charging down the hill into the Sunken Road. By the time the battle had ended, the cemetery was a wreck. Union artillery had scoured the hill, toppling the cemetery's red brick walls and shattering its headstones. Although the damage was later repaired, the scarred marble gateposts stand as reminders of the fury that once engulfed this peaceful spot. The graveyard is the final resting place for members of the Carmichael, Willis, and Wellford families. George Washington's nephew Major George W. Lewis is buried here, as is Dr. Robert Wellford, surgeon general of the United States Army during the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion.
36. FREDMH_080301_219.JPG: The gates of Willis Hill Cemetery, hit multiple times by Union artillery
37. FREDMH_080301_224.JPG: George Washington Lewis was George Washington's nephew
38. FREDMH_080301_260.JPG: Fredericksburg National Cemetery: Approximately 20,000 soldiers died in this region during the Civil War, their remains scattered throughout the countryside in shallow, often unmarked, graves. Congress established Fredericksburg National Cemetery on July 15, 1865, to serve as the burial place for Union soldiers who died near Fredericksburg during the Civil War. The government paid $3,001.25 for slightly more than twelve acres of land here and completed its initial work in the fall of 1869. Confederate soldiers were buried in cemeteries located in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania Court House. The original grave markers were made of wood, and a picket fence enclosed the cemetery. National Boulevard, currently named Lafayette Boulevard, connected Fredericksburg with the National Cemetery, then located well outside of the city. More than 15,000 casualties are buried here today (300 of whom came from later wars before the cemetery was closed to new burials), of whom only about 3,000 are identified. Rounded granite headstones mark the graves of identified Union soldiers. The graves of unknown soldiers are marked by a small square stone bearing two numbers. The top number identifies the plot; the bottom number indicates the number of soldiers buried in the plot.
39. FREDMH_080301_391.JPG: The Second Battle of Fredericksburg: Five months after the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Union army finally captured Marye's Heights. On May 3, 1863, General John Sedgwick's Sixth Corps streamed out of Fredericksburg to attack this ridge. Twice, Confederates in the Sunken Road repulsed the assailants, but on the third try Sedgwick's men triumphed. Charging up a ravine 500 yards to your left front, the victorious Union soldiers swept across this plateau, capturing eight cannon, including two guns of Captain William W. Parker's battery, located here. From Fredericksburg, Sedgwick headed west to assist the main Union army, fighting at Chancellorsville. He never made it. Four miles west of here, Confederate troops blocked his path at Salem Church. Unable to break through their line, Sedgwick retreated across the Rappahannock River at Scott's Ford.
40. FREDMH_080301_402.JPG: May 3, 1863 In this vicinity the men of Parker's Confederate Battery (the "Boy Company") under Lt. J. Thompson Brown fought two guns, twice gallantly assisted in repulsing the Union VI Corps before being outflanked and overwhelmed.
41. FREDMH_080301_430.JPG: Fredericksburg Campaign (old-style NPS sign): December 13, 1862. On this ridge, called Marye's Heights, blazed the cannon of Col. J.B. Walton's Louisiana battalion, the Washington Artillery. Late in the day, out of ammunition, it yielded the post to Col. E.P. Alexander's Reserve Artillery. Gen. Robert Ransom's North Carolina infantrymen supported the guns and reinforced Cobb's Georgians and Kershaw's South Carolinians in the Sunken Road below. The open field of attack was raked "as with a fine-tooth comb," Alexander assured corps commander James Longstreet. "A chicken could not live on that field."
42. FREDMH_080301_442.JPG: Marker: To Commemorate the valor of The Fifth Corps Army of the Potomac and in loving memory of its heroic dead this monument has been erected by Major General Daniel Butterfield, USV, its commander on this field December 13th 1862. Presented to the Fredericksburg and Adjacent National Battlefields Memorial Park Association Corner-stone laid by Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4 AF&AM May 25th, 1900, in the presence of William McKinley, President of the United States, and the monument was dedicated by that lodge May 30, 1901.
43. FREDMH_080301_459.JPG: The Sunken Road: For 130 years, this was a road like thousands of others. First called the Country Road, then Telegraph Road, it carried farmer's wagons into Fredericksburg or townsfolk to visit relatives in the country. During the 1830s, the adjacent landowner built stone walls along the road as it passed below Marye's Heights and "Brompton," the home of John L. Marye. In the 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, the road shed its former names and became simply the "Sunken Road," one of the most famous byways in America. After the Civil War, the road became a typical city street. Much of the original stone wall vanished; houses appeared. But in the 1930s, the National Park Service started reclaiming the road. The Civilian Conservation Corps reconstructed the section of the wall in front of you, and the NPS removed postwar houses. In 2004, the road closed to traffic, allowing the NPS to take up its asphalt surface and rebuild the remaining portions of the wall. Today, the road looks much as it did at the time of the battle. Workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps reconstruct a missing section of stone wall in 1936. A section of original wall still stands at the northern end of the road.
44. FREDMH_080301_461.JPG: Fredericksburg Campaign (old-style NPS sign) With Richmond as his objective, Gen. Ambrose Burnside started the Federal Army of the Potomac from Warrenton on November 15, 1862. Forcing a crossing of the Rappahannock on December 11, he occupied Fredericksburg and the plain south of town along the river. Across that plain, on the morning of December 13, the Federals attacked Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson's front in an unsuccessful attempt to break the Confederate right flank. Then, about noon, other Federal columns formed at the western edge of town (1/2 mile to your rear) and charged across open fields toward Marye's Heights. Confederate infantry repulsed seven Federal attacks. The Federals retreated across the Rappahannock during the night of December 15-16.
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