Thirty-one-year-old Timothy O. Webster, overseer at the Detroit House of Correction, enlisted in the Union Army in July 1862. Private Webster was assigned to Company F of the 24th Michigan Infantry, which was dispatched from Detroit to Washington, D.C., in August. His regiment was later assigned to the famed Iron Brigade. Webster’s letters to his family and friends, housed in Navarro College’s Pearce Civil War Collection, vary in tone from bitter criticism of Federal officers’ behavior to cautious optimism for the Union war effort.

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In December 1862, Webster wrote his wife Harriet (’Hattie’) about the buildup of Union and Confederate troops near Fredericksburg, Va.: ‘We are about 15 miles from where a great battle is expected to come off soon. It is at Fredericksburg. There are mountains on each side of the creek and there are cannon of all size and it seems that they are without number on both sides. They are planted on these mountains base to base. It is plain to see each ones movements with the artillery. We have got 5 pontoon bridges swung across the stream. Our army is to cross under all their fire.’ Union engineers began laying pontoon bridges across the Rappahannock on December 11. The next day, wave after wave of Union troops crossed the river and moved against entrenched Confederate positions in and around Fredericksburg. On December 16, Webster described to Hattie the Battle of Fredericksburg, his green regiment’s baptism of fire: ‘I’ll take this present opportunity to write a few lines to you to let you know that I am yet to be numbered among the living. Last Friday we crossed the Rappahannock into the field of battle and I tell you it has been a field of battle with great slaughter. There have been 7 killed out of our regiment and quite a number wounded.

It was primarily cannonading and it is said to be the heaviest ever known and it lasted until last night when we fell back across the river. The rebs are strong and saucy. We laid out in the drenching rain last night and this morning we marched back 3 miles…[and] are to be ready to march at a moments notice….When I commenced this I expected I could finish it and send it right off but we were ordered right off on picket duty and we have just got relieved, and now we have got orders to march from here in the morning but I can’t tell where we are a going but it is supposed we are going to put up for the winter. We have faced the enemy and with their position they are too much for us. They can kill our men as fast as they have a mind to march up to them. From the way we made the attack on them, if we had not slid out in the night they would have completely annihilated our army before we could have gotten across the river. It is now the 19th. This war is the greatest curse that ever existed in the world. It seems that it will never be settled until the Almighty crushes it by sinking it in to the bowels of the earth or by some other wise plan of bringing it to a close.’

Overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the battle, Webster described the action in another letter to Hattie on December 21: ‘…I cannot forget the terrifying scenes and the horrible sounds of the battle field I must tell you a little more of it. The morning of the 11 we were about 4 miles off when the cannonading commenced. That day we marched to the brink of the river but had to fall back 2 miles where we stayed that night. The firing kept up all day. The next morning we started double quick time to cross the river but when we got there I suppose there were over one hundred thousand people to cross the pontoons before we could get a chance. There were 2 bridges placed side by side. There was a solid column a crossing all day. This is only the left of the army that crossed here. They were a great deal stronger in the center and on the right. Each of these divisions had their own bridges. The whole was a crossing at the same time. Well after we crossed the rebs began to introduce themselves to us in a manner that I was not much accustomed to. The first near call to us was a large cannon-ball struck right about the center of our regiment when we were all a laying down to rest but it did no harm, only tore up a big hole in the ground. After this the shells commenced bursting over our heads. Our Colonel [Henry A. Morrow] said it would do them good to stand the storm for a while. It didn’t matter if a few did get killed but the general [possibly brigade commander Brig. Gen. Solomon Meredith] ordered him to march his men out of the enemy’s range so were led on more to the left and there we stayed that night. The next morning the fire of the enemy commenced right sharp all along the lines of the left and we were led right in front of all only the skirmishers. I will not try to tell you the horrible scenes that I experienced but I tell you the different kind of balls and shells that were flying around us made noises that could never be imagined by those that were never placed in their midst. Well we were kept in front till the arrangement was to retreat. It was done in the night. It was the night of the 15. I see the papers call this a grand reconnaissance in this advance across the river. It is just such things that are sinking our country so fast it will want twice as many men in the spring as we have got now. If this war is to be settled by fighting, then they must pass a law to not pay officers more than a private and let them go and fight for to gain honor and save their country and not all for money and party. If this is not adopted this war will last till our country is bankrupt.’ Casualties at Fredericksburg were severe; Union forces lost 12,000 men. It was an utter disaster for the Union cause.

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