The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock.

The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock. By Francis Augustin O'Reilly. (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 2003. Pp. xviii, 630. $39.95, ISBN 0-8071-2809-0.)

Nobody knows the Fredericksburg battlefield better than Francis Augustin O'Reilly. His new book takes full advantage of that knowledge along with very thorough research to offer a full-scale battle study. Over the years, historians have not paid much attention to Fredericksburg, in part because the engagement was sandwiched between the much more complex and seemingly more important Antietam and Chancellorsville campaigns. Another problem is that Fredericksburg was a Confederate victory but a Union story--of relatively little interest to Confederate partisans (with most of the questions and controversies confined to the Federal side) and too depressing for Union buffs. General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia won easily, or so it appeared, and General Ambrose E. Burnside's Army of the Potomac suffered one of the war's most devastating defeats. Too often the entire battle has been reduced to a simple tale of futile Federal assaults against Marye's Heights and the famous stone wall.

O'Reilly forces us to take another look at what we thought we knew about Fredericksburg. First of all, the battle had some unusual features. This was a rare winter campaign, it featured the "first bridgehead landing under fire in American history," and the intense street fighting on December 11, 1862, had much to do with the bloodbath that followed (p. 101). Secondly, the "battle" of Fredericksburg was almost two separate battles--the familiar assaults of the Federal right against Lieutenant General James Longstreet on the Confederate left and the initially successful, highly significant, but often neglected attacks of Major General George G. Meade and Brigadier General John Gibbon against Lieutenant General Stonewall Jackson's forces on the Confederate right.

All students of the war will learn a great deal from this book. The analysis of Confederate strategy and troop movements at the beginning of the campaign is superb. For the Federals, O'Reilly does not just explain the delay in the arrival of bridging material but nicely describes exactly how a pontoon bridge was constructed. For anyone interested in battle tactics, this volume should serve as a primer. Beginning with excellent maps that go down to the regimental level, the author meticulously describes terrain features, including many usually overlooked ones, that greatly influenced the ebb and flow of the fighting. Detailed accounts of troop movements and the timing of assaults present a clear picture of what happened without sacrificing the drama and tension of battle or neglecting the suffering and sacrifice of the common soldier. Perhaps most impressive, by carefully delineating specific objectives and operational details, O'Reilly shows how all those assaults on the stone wall were not cut from the same cloth.

Along the way, O'Reilly offers a number of sound judgments on generals and command decisions. His treatment of Burnside is fair-minded and helps make that general's easily lampooned performance more understandable. The often underrated Meade receives high marks, and the vainglorious Andrew Atkinson Humphreys takes some well-merited criticism. O'Reilly carries his narrative up through the infamous Mud March, and here again the reader is treated to fresh detail and a thoroughgoing account of an important episode. Despite its aborted character, the Mud March led directly to Burnside's removal from command and compounded the morale crisis in the Army of the Potomac. "Fredericksburg stands out among the landmark campaigns of the Civil War," O'Reilly concludes, "It saw the clash of the two largest armies ever engaged in the war" (p. 495). The battle marked both a low point for Federal fortunes in the East and the final appearance in combat of the Lee-Longstreet-Jackson trio. For officers as well as common soldiers (from whom O'Reilly quotes liberally), Fredericksburg loomed large in their memories of the war, and this book offers the kind of attention that the campaign has long deserved.

GEORGE C. RABLE

University of Alabama