At Hamilton’s Crossing
During the fiercest part of the battle, “Stonewall” Jackson was on the hill just on the Fredericksburg side of Hamilton’s Crossing where Walker’s artillery was posted, but toward evening, fired with his hope of driving the Union forces across the river, he rode rapidly from place to place, sending out frequent orders. One of these he gave to an aide.
“Captain, go through there and if you and your horse come out alive, tell Stuart I am going to advance my whole line at sunset.” It was this charge, mentioned above, which failed.
Late that night, rising from the blankets which he shared with a Chaplain, Jackson wrote some orders. While he was doing this, an orderly came and standing at the tent flap, said, “General Gregg is dying, General, and sent me to say to you that he wrote you a letter recently in which he used expressions he is sorry for. He says he meant no disrespect by that letter and was only doing what he thought was his duty. He hopes you will forgive him.”
Without hesitation, Jackson, who was deeply stirred, answered, “Tell General Gregg I will be with him directly.”
He rode through the woods back to where the brave Georgian was dying, and day was about to break when he came back to his troops.
General Maxey Gregg, of Georgia, was killed in action here, as were a number of other gallant officers.
Jackson held the right of the Confederate lines all day with 26,000 men against 55,000. His losses were about 3,415, while Hooker and Franklin lost 4,447. Meanwhile, against Marye’s Heights, the left center of the line, almost two miles away, General Burnside sent again and again terrific infantry charges.
The Charge at Marye’s Heights
The hills just back of Fredericksburg are fronted by an upward sloping plane, and at the foot of that part of the hills called Marye’s Heights is a stone wall and the “Sunken Road”—as fatal here for Burnside as was the Sunken Road at Waterloo for Napoleon. On Marye’s Heights was the Washington Artillery, and a number of guns—a veritable fortress, ready, as General Pegram said, “to sweep the plans in front as close as a fine-tooth comb.” At the foot of the heights behind the stone wall were Cobb’s Georgians, Kershaw’s South Carolinians, and Ransom’s and Cobb’s North Carolinas—nine thousand riflemen, six deep, firing over the front lines’ shoulders, so that, so one officer wrote “they literally sent bullets in sheets.”