When the 1st Brigade reached the stalled Union line, the front line slowed as large numbers of men fell dead and wounded from the enemy fire. Soldiers began to blast away without orders, but somehow the brigade officers managed to keep them moving forward. Instinctively the men bowed their heads as a storm of bursting shells, canister and Minie bullets descended upon them. One quick-thinking Maine soldier hoisted a wounded comrade on his back and headed lickety-split for the rear. An officer ordered him back into the ranks, but the private replied without looking back, ‘Captain, you must think I’m a damned fool to let Baker die here on the field!’

The soldiers made it to the railroad and leaped over the ditch with a cheer. By this time the North Carolina regiments defending the tracks were out of ammunition, having stripped even the dead and wounded of their remaining cartridges. Two members of the 16th Maine were speared by bayonet-tipped rifles thrown at them by the Confederate defenders, but the Federals drove the defenders from their position. With their right flank turned, the rest of Lane’s men fell back 100 yards into the sheltering woods.

The bluecoats followed the retreating Confederates into the woods. As regimental officers attempted to disentangle the mixed regiments and get them back into line, Colonel Root galloped back to Gibbon and asked for more troops and further orders. Gibbon told him to press forward and promised to send him support.

Meanwhile, a determined Confederate counterattack led by Thomas’ Georgia brigade swept the 2nd Division’s front line with a murderous fire. A Union veteran of the fight later wrote a poem about what must have been on the minds of the embattled Federal soldiers there: ‘If your officers are dead and the sergeants look white/Remember it’s ruin to run from a fight,/So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,/And wait for support like a soldier,/Wait, wait, wait like a soldier.’

Root returned again to Gibbon to plead for more troops; Gibbon again promised reinforcements. By this time the 26th New York and 90th Pennsylvania had returned to the fight after being threatened by Gibbon’s staff officers. The two regiments advanced to the railroad tracks, where they joined the 107th Pennsylvania. Root demanded that Lyle send the two returning regiments into the woods, but Lyle refused.

At about 2:15, Root’s line began to break as first the 104th New York and then the 94th New York gave way on the left and retreated from the woods. Confederate troops mounting strong counterattacks began reoccupying the woods on the brigade’s left.

At 2:30, Gibbon left the field after being wounded in the wrist by a shell fragment. Command of the division went to Taylor, who instructed Root to withdraw from the woods when ‘their safety demanded it.’ Realizing that without support his position could not be held, Root reluctantly gave the order to fall back. Halt’s battery joined the retreat after firing a last round into the advancing Confederates. The battery had fired 1, 100 rounds of ammunition and lost 16 men and 31 horses during the fight.

By 3 p.m. it was obvious that the Union assault had failed. The 2nd Division’s battered regiments marched back to the Old Richmond Road in good order, bringing their wounded with them. As the 88th Pennsylvania was withdrawing, Private Nathan White turned toward the Confederate guns and jokingly called out, ‘Cease fire and come to shoulder! ‘ At that instant he was shot in the head and fell over dead.

The division formed a new battle line, but darkness ended the fighting. Volunteers carrying lanterns and stretchers were sent between the lines to recover the wounded and retrieve what arms and ammunition they could.

The exhausted soldiers spent another bitterly cold night sleeping on the frozen mud and dreading the return of battle the next morning. Before daylight, the men moved out again in support of Doubleday’s division, but there was no further fighting.

On the 15th, a truce was called to allow both sides to bury their dead. Union and Confederate burial parties chatted freely as they pursued their grim duties. The dead were found in every imaginable position, and many of the Union corpses had been stripped of their uniforms.

That evening, the Left Grand Division began withdrawing across the pontoons in a heavy rain. By 4:30 a.m. the last of Franklin’s command had crossed the bridges. Farther north, the Right Grand Division had suffered a similar fate.

At a terrible cost, the brave men of Gibbon’s 2nd Division had carried out their orders to support Meade’s attack. The division had suffered 1,267 casualties out of a total force of 3,500 men. The 12th Massachusetts had lost 105 of 258 men; the 16th Maine lost 230 of 417 in its first fight, but won the proud reputation of a fighting regiment.

Although the main battle had been an abysmal failure, Gibbon’s soldiers had accomplished what no other Union division at Fredericksburg had managed: they had breachedhowever briefly-the formidable Confederate tine. In the end, however, it had all been for naught. Fredericksburg was destined to remain a haunted name among the men who survived the battle.

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This article was written by Judy Yandoh and originally appeared in the November 2001 issue of America’s Civil War magazine.

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