Fredericksburg-2007 by dowcarpenter

In November of 1862, in the second year of the American Civil War, General Ambrose Burnside began to lead the Army of the Potomac to Richmond, Virginia, with the intent of seizing the Confederate capital. Burnside’s strategy included a detour through the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, which would place his forces on a direct route to Richmond. As it happened, the army ended up stalled at the side of the Rappahannock River to the east of Fredericksburg, waiting for pontoon bridges to arrive. When they finally did, General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was already arrayed on the land rising to the west of the town, with Lieutenant General James Longstreet’s division stationed at the part of the elevation called Marye’s Heights. On December 13 Major General Edwin Sumner’s division attempted to take the heights, advancing across a half mile-long field towards a stone wall at the base of the slope. None of them made it even that far: a hail of gunfire from both Longstreet’s artillery and Confederate troops positioned behind the wall repulsed the charge. Four more charges were staved off, leaving the field strewn with dead and dying Union troops. Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who commanded the 20th Maine Regiment, recalled the night after the battle in a memoir published in 1887:

But out of that silence from the battle’s crash and roar rose new sounds more appalling still; a strange ventriloquism of which you could not locate the source, a smothered moan, a wail so far and deep and wide, as if a thousand discords were flowing together into a key note—weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear, yet startling with its nearness. The writhing concord broken by cries for help, some begging for a drop of water, some calling on God for pity, and some on friendly hands to finish what the enemy had so horribly begun. Some with delirious, dreamy voices murmuring loved names, as if the dearest were bending over them…and underneath, all the time, that deep, bass note from closed lips, too hopeless or too heroic to articulate their agony.

The following night, as Union troops dug graves for their fallen comrades, the Northern Lights appeared in the sky; Chamberlain recalled this too in his memoir:

“We will give them a starlight burial,” it was said; but heaven ordained a more sublime illumination. As we bore them in dark and sad procession, their own loved North took up the escort and lifting her glorious lights, led the triumphal march over the bridge that spans the worlds. Fiery lances and banners of blood and flame, columns of pearly light, garlands and wreaths of gold—all pointing upward and beckoning on. Who would not pass on as they did, dead for their country’s life, and lighted to burial by the meteor splendors of their native sky?

In all, the Federals lost 12,653 men in the battle; the Confederates 4,201. Though it was certainly a Union defeat, the Confederates could not claim to have destroyed the Army of the Potomac, and the conflict that consumed the nation was to drag on for another two years, ultimately claiming the lives of over 600,000 men. The horror of the loss of human life was perhaps best put by Lee himself, as he watched the Union men fall in droves at Fredericksburg: “It is well that war is so terrible—we should grow too fond of it.”

De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine:
Exaudi vocem meam
Fiant aures tuae intendentes
In vocem deprecationis meae

[Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord:
Hear my voice,
Let thy ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplication.]

– Psalm 129:1-2, Vulgate

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night:
When you, my son and my comrade, dropt at my side that day,
One look I but gave, which your dear eyes return’d,
with a look I shall never forget;
One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground;
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle.
Till late in the night again I made my way;
Found you in death so cold, dear comrade—found your body, son of responding kisses,
(never again on earth responding;)
Bared your face in the starlight—curious the scene—cool blew the night-wind;
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield spreading;
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant silent night;
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh—Long, long I gazed;
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you, dearest comrade—
Not a tear, not a word;
Vigil of silence, love and death—vigil for you my son and my soldier,
As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole;
Vigil final for you, brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death,
I faithfully loved you and cared for you living—
I think we shall surely meet again;)
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d,
My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form,
And there and then by the rising sun, my son in his grave,
in his rude-dug grave I laid;
Ending my vigil strange with that—vigil of night and battlefield dim;
Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding;)
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain—vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d,
I rose from the chill ground, folded my soldier well in his blanket,
And buried him where he fell.

– Walt Whitman,
“Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night”
from Drum Taps

Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine,
Cum sanctis tuis in aeternum.

[Let eternal light shine on them Lord,
With thy saints in eternity.]

– Missa pro defunctis

William Stone, baritone; Temple University Concert Choir; Temple University Chamber Orchestra; Alan Harler, conductor; 11/9/2007, Independence Seaport Museum, Philadelphia, PA