Never Call Retreat Read Online Free PDF Page B

cause, but he did see the war mostly in terms of opportunity for Joe Hooker, and there was no opportunity in front of Marye's Heights. He sent back word that the assault could not succeed, and when his orders were repeated he rode back to headquarters to protest in person, doing it so vigorously that Burnside's military secretary considered him "ungentlemanly and impatient." It did no good; orders were orders, and Hooker's division began to advance over ground littered with dead and wounded from Sumner's command.
    Hooker was right. The case was hopeless, and the new divisions got no farther than those that had gone in earlier. Toward the end of the day a curious additional handicap developed. Bridadier General Andrew A. Humphreys, leading a division through the smoky twilight toward the blazing wall, believed that his men might actually have stormed the position if the prostrate survivors of former attacks had not kept trying to stop them. Humphreys' soldiers waded through a sea of clutching hands; wounded and unwounded men wanted to see no more men killed in an attempt to do the impossible, and they reached up to grab feet and pants legs, throwing the advance into such disorder that it gave way under fire as all the others had done. And at last, "finding that I had lost as many men as my orders required me to lose," Hooker suspended the attack. 9
    Different participants said different things, all of them meaning much the same. Old Sumner spoke of the fearful musketry that swept the plain and said that "no troops could stand such a fire as that." Hooker remarked that the soldiers "were put to do a work that no men could do," and one of the infantrymen involved said that he and his comrades "might as well have tried to take Hell." The next day a general officer visited Burnside and found him pacing restlessly back and forth in his tent, repeating "Oh, those men! Those men!" The visitor asked what he meant, and Burnside gestured toward the field where so many had fallen, saying: "I am thinking of them all the time." 10
    Haunted thus by ghosts, Burnside also was plagued by a tragic might-have-been. This half of the battle never could have been a success, but the other half was different. His blow at Stonewall Jackson could have been a victory. It did not actually come very close to it but the possibility was there, and Burnside did not need to shoulder all of the blame for the failure.
    In his assault on Lee's right Burnside used his Left Grand Division, under William B. Franklin. A favorite of the departed McClellan, Franklin was careful, competent, and uninspired; the sort of general who is unlikely to make a serious blunder and equally unlikely to capitalize on a blunder made by his opponent. On this day at Fredericksburg, Franklin followed the strict letter of his orders and came to failure. It seems likely that even after the battle was over he did not quite see the success that might have been won if his orders had been more intelligently drafted by General Burnside or more intelligently interpreted by himself.
    Burnside wanted Franklin to use his entire force to fight his way into Lee's right rear, but the written orders he sent down did not say it that way. They told Franklin to get ready for a rapid move down the Old Richmond road, which ran past Jackson's front and gave access to roads that led directly to the Confederate rear. They also told him to send, at once, "a division at least" to seize the rising ground north of Hamilton's Crossing. Two of Hooker's infantry divisions and two divisions of cavalry were put at his disposal, so that he commanded nearly half of the Federal army. He was instructed, finally, to be prepared "to move at once, as soon as the fog lifts." 11
    This opaque writing led to trouble. Franklin thought he had simply been told to strike a moderate blow and stand by for further orders. Dutifully enough, he sent out a single division to attack Jackson's line, with another division in support. He also