THE BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG, FROM THE BATTERY ON LEE’S HILL.
Still again they formed and advanced, and again they were driven off. By this time they had difficulty in walking over the dead bodies of their comrades. So persistent were they in their continuing advances that General Lee, who at the time was with Longstreet on Lee’s Hill, became uneasy and said that he feared the Federals would break through his line. To this Longstreet replied, “General, if you put every man now on the other side of the Potomac on that field to approach me over the same line, and give me plenty of ammunition, I will kill them all before they reach my line. Look to your right; you are in some danger there, but not on my line.” As a precaution, General Kershaw was ordered with the remainder of his brigade down to the stone wall to carry ammunition to Cobb and to reinforce him if necessary. Kershaw arrived just in time to succeed Cobb, who was falling from a Federal bullet, to die in a few minutes from loss of blood. A fifth time the Federals formed, charged, and were repulsed, and likewise a sixth time, when they were again driven back, and night came to end the dreadful carnage. The Federals then withdrew, leaving the field literally piled up with the bodies of their dead. The Confederate musketry alone killed and wounded at least five thousand, while the artillery brought the number of those killed and wounded at the foot of Marye’s Hill to over seven thousand.
During the night a Federal strayed beyond his line, was taken up by Longstreet’s troops, and on his person was found a memorandum of General Burnside’s arrangements and an order for the renewal of the battle next day. Upon receiving this information General Lee gave immediate orders for a line of rifle-pits on the top of Marye’s Hill for General Ransom, who had been held somewhat in reserve, and for other guns to be placed on Taylor’s Hill. The Confederates were up before daylight on the morrow, anxious to receive General Burnside again. The Federal troops, however, had left the field. It was at first thought that the memorandum was intended as a ruse of war, but it was afterwards learned that General Burnside expected to resume attack, but gave it up when he became fully aware of the fate of his soldiers at the foot of Marye’s Hill.
CHICKAMAUGA
This battle marked the only great Confederate victory won in the West, and was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Indeed, the contest for the bloodiest day in this great war is, I believe, between Antietam and Chickamauga. Official reports show that on both sides the casualties embrace the enormous proportion of thirty-three per cent. of the troops actually engaged. On the Union side there were over a score of regiments in which the losses in this single fight exceeded 49.4 per cent. The “Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava,” immortalized by Tennyson, did not suffer by ten per cent. as much as did thirty of the Union regiments at Chickamauga; and a number of Confederate regiments suffered even more than their Federal opponents.
Longstreet’s command in less than two hours lost nearly forty-four per cent. of its strength. Of the troops that received their splendid assaults, Steedman’s and Brannan’s commands lost respectively forty-nine and thirty-eight per cent. in less than four hours. The loss of single regiments showed a much heavier percentage. For instance, the Tenth Tennessee Regiment lost sixty-eight per cent.; the Fifth Georgia, 61.1; the Second Tennessee, 60.2; the Sixteenth Alabama, 58.6; a great number of them more than fifty per cent.
The total Confederate losses were about 18,000 men; the total Federal losses, about 17,000. Viewed from the stand-point of both sides, Chickamauga was the fifth greatest battle of the war, being exceeded only by Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, the Wilderness, and Chancellorsville. But each of these battles were of a much longer time. The total Confederates engaged in the battle were 59,242; the total Federals, 60,867. The battle was fought on the 20th of September, 1863.
