What was the landscape of the battle of fredricksburg?

Answer 1

Fredericksburg was then a small town on the south bank of the Rappahannock River. The even smaller town of Falmouth was across on the northern bank. Behind both towns rising away from the river were a range of hills. Northern artillery was on the hills behind Falmouth. When Burnside, commanding the Yankees, arrived in Falmouth, he waited nearly two weeks for pontoon trains - these were wagons carrying large boats, which would be tied side by side and covered with planks to make temporary bridges. This delay allowed Lee time to move his army onto the hills just behind (to the south of) Fredericksburg. Confederate artillery was strongly emplaced on these hills. The hill directly behind Fredericksburg is Mayre's Heights - named for a man who built a large home atop the hill. (A bit farther south, away from town, behind the Mayre House there is a large monument atop the grave of Mary Washington, mother of George). There were Rebel cannon all over the slope of Mayre's Heights facing toward Fredericksburg. Between the base of this Height and Fredericksburg there was an open, flat area, maybe half a mile wide, completely commanded by the Rebel cannon on the hillside, so that Porter Alexander, the artillery commander, was able to promise, accurately, that nothing could live on this "plain" when his artillery opened fire. When the Yankees finally had their pontoons their engineers started to build the pontoon bridges, sniped at by Rebels hiding in cellars of the houses on the riverfront. (Most citizens of the town had fled). There was a little house-to-house in town, then the Rebels pulled out, back to their main line. The day of the attack the Yankees made as many as fourteen separate attacks, depending on who was counting, in an effort to get across the open area below Mayre's Heights. A few got as close as fifty feet before being shot down. There is a sunken road - still there today - along the base of Mayre's Heights, created by generations of wagon wheels wearing away the road until it was about five feet below the surface of the surrounding land. Cobb's Georgia Legion infantry were posted there, and were joined after the first attack by the 25th North Carolina Infantry, and these men blazed away all day shooting down the attacking Yankees, as they were also swept by artillery fire. Burnside's subordinates talked him out of continuing this senseless slaughter the next day. Eventually a truce was arranged to remove any of the Yankee wounded still alive on the "plain" in front of Mayre's Heights, and to allow for the burial of the dead. Whatever Yankee unit was sent on this duty had little respect for their fellow soldiers. In the spring of 1863, when the armies moved away and the citizens of Fredericksburg could return to their homes, in an icehouse by the River they found the skeletons of 967 dead Yankees put there by their colleagues. On the day of the battle there was a diversionary attack a couple of miles downstream (east) of the town, by Yankees who crossed on other pontoon bridges and there encountered Stonewall Jackson's Corps, also strongly positioned on hills. They made one good breach into Jackson's line by luckily finding a gap, but were swiftly expelled by a counterattack and went back to the north side of the River. The area between the Sunken Road at the foot of Mayre's Heights and the old town of Fredericksburg - the "plain" so many Yankees died trying to cross - is today mostly covered with a subdivision of houses, built on some of the bloodiest ground imaginable.