LATEST MODEL OF GATLING GUN.
Had not night been at hand, Burnside would have ordered another charge and sacrificed hundreds of more lives, but he concluded to let the men live until the next morning. Already 1,200 had been killed, almost 10,000 wounded, and several thousand were missing. The commanders gathered around Burnside and insisted that the army should be brought across the river before it was annihilated, but he refused. He was resolved on sacrificing several thousand more under the ghastly name of a "charge." At last, however, he became more reasonable and listened to his officers. Perhaps the shrieks of the wounded, who lay for two days and nights where they had fallen without help, produced some effect in awaking him to a sense of his horrible blundering and incompetency, for, when the bleak, dismal morning dawned, the intended "charge" was not ordered. The Army of the Potomac had been wounded so well-nigh unto death that it could not stand another similar blow.
On the cold, rainy night of December 15th, the wretched forces tramped back over the river on the pontoon-bridges, having suffered the worst defeat in the army's whole history. It was in the power of Lee to destroy it utterly, but it slipped away from him, just as it had slipped away from McClellan after the battle of Antietam.
The Union losses at Fredericksburg were: Killed, 1,284; wounded, 9,600; missing, 1,769; total, 12,653. The Confederate losses were: Killed, 596; wounded, 4,068; captured and missing, 651. Total, 5,315.
SUMMARY OF THE YEAR'S OPERATIONS.
The eventful year had been one of terrible fighting. It had opened with the Union successes of Forts Henry and Donelson, followed by Pea Ridge, Pittsburg Landing, and Corinth in the West, the naval battle between the Merrimac and Monitor, the capture of Roanoke Island and of New Orleans. Bragg's invasion of Kentucky was injurious to the Union cause, while, as we have seen, the campaign against Richmond had been a series of disastrous failures. Still, taken as a whole, the year showed a decisive step forward. The Union line had been advanced across the State of Tennessee, substantial progress had been made in opening the Mississippi, and the blockade was enforced with a rigidity that caused great distress in the Confederacy.
Both sides felt the terrific strain of the war. The Confederacy in April passed a conscription act, which made all able-bodied males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five years soldiers for the war. All such were taken from the control of the State of which they were residents and placed at the disposal of President Davis until the close of the war. This conscription act was soon made much more severe in its provisions.
THE CONFEDERATE PRIVATEERS.
One source of help to the Confederacy was her privateers, which wrought immense damage to northern shipping. England assisted in fitting them out. Despite the protests of Minister Adams, many of these were allowed to put to sea. One of the first was the Oreto, afterward known as the Florida. She succeeded in eluding the blockade at Mobile, through flying the British flag, delivered her valuable freight, received her armament, and came forth again in the latter part of December and began her wholesale destruction of American merchantmen.
The privateer Sumter was driven into Gibraltar, and so closely watched by the Tuscarora that Captain Semmes, her commander, sold her, and made his way to England, where the English built for him the most famous privateer the Confederacy ever had—the Alabama—of which much more will be told further on.