Second Battle of Fredericksburg, 1863: Sedgwick takes Marye's Heights

In December 1862 the stone wall at the foot of Marye's Heights had cost the Union army thousands of men and its commander his post. Five months later Union troops took the same wall in a single morning. The victory did not save the campaign it was part of, but it showed how much the battle depended on numbers in the right place.²

Background: Hooker's plan

After Ambrose Burnside's defeat at Fredericksburg in December 1862 and the failed Mud March in January, Lincoln gave the Army of the Potomac to Joseph Hooker. Hooker's plan for the spring of 1863 was a double blow. He would march most of the army upriver, cross the Rappahannock and come down on Robert E. Lee from the west, while Sedgwick stayed in front of Fredericksburg to hold Lee in place, and the cavalry cut Lee's links to Richmond.³ › The Battle of Fredericksburg, 1862

Lee did not wait to be crushed. He left Jubal Early with about 10,000 men to watch it and turned west with the rest of his army to meet Hooker in the Wilderness around Chancellorsville.⁴

Armies and commanders

How many men Sedgwick had depends on the moment. Encyclopedia Virginia notes that his wing began with about 60,000 men and shrank to about 23,000 as Hooker drew off corps for the fighting at Chancellorsville; the National Park Service also gives 23,000. With John Gibbon's division of the Second Corps, the American Battlefield Trust counts 27,100 Union soldiers engaged against 12,000 Confederates.⁵

On Marye's Heights itself the Confederate center was held by part of William Barksdale's Mississippi brigade behind the stone wall in the sunken road. Encyclopedia Virginia credits Early with 56 guns, George Rogan in America's Civil War with 46.⁶

On the night of 2 May Hooker ordered Sedgwick to cross, move west toward Chancellorsville and, in the words the National Park Service quotes, "attack and destroy any force you may fall in with on the road."⁷

The battle, phase one: the first assault

Sedgwick's men moved into Fredericksburg by daylight on 3 May and were joined by Gibbon's division. He first meant to strike the two ends of Marye's Heights, but on the right Gibbon's men were stopped by a canal and pinned down by Confederate fire, so the attack fell on the center.⁸

The first assault on the stone wall was thrown back. Encyclopedia Virginia says some of the attackers got within about twenty paces of the wall before close-range fire drove them off.⁹

Turning point: the truce

Then came the moment that decided the day. Union soldiers asked for a truce to collect the wounded lying in front of the wall, and Colonel Thomas Griffin of the 18th Mississippi granted it, without Barksdale's permission according to Encyclopedia Virginia. While they gathered their wounded, the Federals could see how few men were holding the wall, and they reported it to Sedgwick.¹⁰

The second attack went in after ten o'clock in three columns. The 5th Wisconsin was aimed straight at the wall, and the American Battlefield Trust also singles out the 6th Maine. After a brief hand-to-hand fight the Union troops broke through, drove the Confederates off the ridge and captured guns and prisoners; Griffin himself was taken with his surviving men. Barksdale's men fell back south along the Telegraph Road.¹¹

The cost of the morning is counted differently. The American Battlefield Trust puts it at about 1,100 Union and 700 Confederate casualties; Encyclopedia Virginia and Rogan agree on about 1,100 Union but count about 475 Confederates.¹² › Robert E. Lee

Phase two: Salem Church

Sedgwick did not press his victory. He paused to bring up his corps and reorganize, and was unsettled by false reports that more Confederates were coming. The pause gave Lee time to react.¹³

Cadmus Wilcox's Alabama brigade took position across the Plank Road west of the town, on a low wooded ridge crowned by Salem Church, a plain brick Baptist church built in 1844, with a wooden schoolhouse nearby. Confederate riflemen were posted in the church's upper gallery. Lee sent Lafayette McLaws from Chancellorsville to reinforce the ridge, and the National Park Service puts the Confederates there at about 10,000.¹⁴

At about 3:25 p.m. Confederate guns at a tollgate opened fire on William Brooks's leading Union division, and the Federals pushed forward into the woods.¹⁵

Union brigades attacked up the slope through dense undergrowth. A Union soldier quoted by the National Park Service remembered "a tremendous roar of musketry" from an unseen enemy about a hundred feet away. Near the church the Federals reached the crest and broke the Confederate line. Then a countercharge led by the 9th Alabama drove the Union troops back down the slope.¹⁶

Encyclopedia Virginia counts 1,523 Union and 674 Confederate casualties at Salem Church. Rogan gives the Sixth Corps 4,611 killed, wounded and missing for the whole campaign, the heaviest loss of any corps.¹⁷

Aftermath: Banks Ford and the retreat

On the morning of 4 May Early's men retook Marye's Heights and the town behind Sedgwick. Sedgwick drew his corps into a defensive line covering Banks Ford, and at about 5:30 p.m. the Confederates attacked it. The line held until dark.¹⁸

That night Sedgwick recrossed the Rappahannock. Hooker had first ordered him to withdraw and then countermanded the order, but by the time the second message arrived nearly all the Sixth Corps was across.¹⁹

With no hope left of a blow from the east, Hooker took his own army back across the river: the National Park Service and the American Battlefield Trust date it to the night of 5 May, Encyclopedia Virginia to 6 May. The Chancellorsville campaign ended in Confederate victory.²⁰ › The Battle of Chancellorsville, 1863

The church became a field hospital. One eyewitness, quoted by Bruce Gourley, wrote that "hundreds upon hundreds of wounded were gathered up and brought for surgical attention."²¹

Legacy and memory

Many historians count Chancellorsville as Lee's greatest victory, but it cost him Stonewall Jackson, shot by his own men on the night of 2 May. Encyclopedia Virginia notes that more energy from Sedgwick, and a little more luck, could have denied Lee his win; Hooker himself, Rogan writes, blamed Sedgwick for the failure of his plan. Lee, emboldened, turned north toward Pennsylvania and Gettysburg.²²

Sedgwick did not live to see the end of the war. On 9 May 1864, at Spotsylvania Court House, a Confederate sharpshooter killed him, making him the highest-ranking Union officer to die in the Civil War.²³ › Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, 1864

Visiting today

Salem Church is part of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The National Park Service notes that most of this part of the battlefield has disappeared under urban development, but the church survives, with the 15th and 23rd New Jersey monuments beside it. After the war it was restored and used for services until the congregation built a new church in the 1950s, and in 1961 the old building was given to the nation. Bullet holes from the fighting can still be seen in its walls.²⁴