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[243] General Burnside's plan of attack rested on the hypothesis that the crossing of the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg could be made a surprise.1 But this expectation had been grievously disappointed, and it would have been a judicious measure then to have made other dispositions;2 for the naked enterprise, stripped of this hope, was of a very desperate character. A brief description of the terrain will serve to prove this. The battle-field of Fredericksburg presents the character of a broken plain stretching back from the southern margin of the Rappahannock from six hundred yards to two miles, at which distance it rises into a bold ridge that forms a slight angle with the river, and is itself dominated by an elevated plateau. This ridge is, from Falmouth down to where it touches Massaponax Creek about six miles long, and this was the vantage-ground of the Confederates which they had strengthened with earthworks and crowned with artillery. In rear of the town the plain is traversed by a canal, at right angles with which run two roads leading up to the heights,3 which rise abruptly at the distance of a few hundred yards.
1 ‘I decided to cross here because I felt satisfied that they did not expect us to cross here, but down below.’—Burnside's Evidence: Report on the Conduct of the War, vol. i., p. 652.
2 A commander of any fertility of resource might readily have devised modifications of the plan adapted to the altered state of affairs. I shall mention one move that would have been promising. The passage of the river at Fredericksburg was made for a real attack. Burnside might have converted it into a feint; he might have made threatening demonstrations of attack with Sumner's command, and meanwhile, he might have thrown Hooker's two corps up by Banks' or United States Ford, to execute a turning movement on Lee's left. Hooker could have been strengthened almost indefinitely, and it is difficult to see why this operation should have failed of success.
3 The road to the right leads from Fredericksburg to Culpepper; that to the left, named the ‘Telegraph Road,’ from Fredericksburg to Richmond.
1866.
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