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long columns-of-four, marching west toward Marye's Heights. Other columns moved down the country roads to the south, and by the river still more columns were coming across on the pontoon bridges. Below the town, battle line upon battle line began to swing forward through the brown fields toward Stonewall Jackson's position, and under Marye's Heights the endless columns fanned out to make more battle lines. Far beyond, across the river, quick flashes of light flickered up and down the length of Stafford Heights as the powerful Federal siege guns began to feel for their targets.
    Southeast of Hamilton's Crossing, Jeb Stuart's horse artillery was taking position to open fire on the Yankee left, and on Marye's Heights the massed guns began to lay crisscross lines of fire on the plain where the Federal assault was taking shape. A little earlier, posting his guns, tough James
    Longstreet, lieutenant general commanding the left of Lee's army, asked his chief of artillery if there were guns enough to cover the approaches, and the artillerist laughed at him. Once he opened fire, he said, not even a chicken could live on the open ground between Fredericksburg and the sunken road. 7 It was only a moderate overstatement.
    Burnside had divided his army into three masses which he called Grand Divisions, each commanded by a major general in whom he had confidence and with whom the battle plan had been discussed earlier. The hardest assignment, the assault on Marye's Heights, had been given to the Right Grand Division, led by Edwin Vose Sumner. Sumner was a rigid Old-Army type, a man of boundless courage and fidelity and the simplest mental processes; admirable, and yet a little out of date. He had been an army officer since 1819, which was long before most of the men in his command had been born, and he had a roaring parade-ground voice and a dogged heads-down quality that led his juniors to refer to him as the Bull of the Woods. Burnside had ordered him to stay on the Yankee side of the river, fearing that if Sumner were anywhere near the scene of action he would insist on getting all the way up in the front line. Burnside's order probably saved Sumner's life, because the front line of his Grand Division this day was a deadly place and the old man would unquestionably have been in it if his orders had permitted it.
    Sumner was brave and so were his men, but bravery was not enough. He sent his two army corps into action unimaginatively, after the Antietam system, one division at a time, so that the attack on the heights became a long series of battles and the defense never had to bear the weight of one massive blow. Each division had to cross the wide plain where the dead grass was blistered by Longstreet's artillery, and the men who were not killed by the gunfire had to march up toward the stone wall that concealed the sunken road. The wall was a quarter of a mile long, there were six ranks of infantry behind it enjoying almost perfect protection, and the blue brigades coming up elbow to elbow offered a target that could not be missed.
    The mustering of Burnside's hosts was impressive to see. Watching from the hilltop where he had his headquarters flag, Lee knew a moment of doubt and cautioned Longstreet that this pressure might break his line. Longstreet refused to worry, asserting that if every man in the Federal army came up to assault Marye's Heights, "I will kill them all." 8 From the start of the battle to the end of it, not one Federal soldier got within 100 feet of the stone wall.
    The failure was not for want of trying: nearly half of the Yankee army set out to get there. After Sumner's people wore themselves out Burnside sent in his Center Grand Division. This was under Joseph Hooker, whom the newspapers called "Fighting Joe" and who was everything Sumner was not. He was smart, adaptable, his mental agility unhampered by the slightest trace of loyalty toward any superior: there was no reason to doubt his fidelity to the Union