October 24
Fredericksburg
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We were out at the bikes, ready to go, about 9AM. It had rained that night, and was still misting as we rode into town. We knew that the Visitor’s Center was not far, and found it pretty quickly. We started to watch a film there, but it seemed to be more touristy that historical, so we walked out. We discovered that there were two Visitor’s Centers in town, the other one dealt specifically with the War. We mounted back up and promptly got lost, but I saw a sign that said something about a sunken road, so I turned there and we wandered around until we found the right place. There was a Model A club meeting in the parking lot, probably 15 cars beautifully restored, so we parked the bikes among them and made pictures. It was raining lightly but steadily by now. The museum had an interesting film narrated by James Earl Jones, and a good bookstore. We walked out in the drizzle to take the walking tour of the battlefield and cemetery. A lot of the battlefield has been lost to development, but enough remains to get an idea of what happened. |
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In December 1862, Lee had one of his greatest victories here as he defended the town in which he had met his wife (who was a great-granddaughter of George Washington). Union General Ambrose Burnside (remember him from Antietam?) gathered his troops on the east shore of the Rappahannock, facing the town. He was delayed here, waiting for pontoon bridges to cross the river with. During that lull, the Confederates dug into the hill behind the town, known as Marye’s Heights, where they massed artillery; and a sunken wagon road with a stone wall in front of it, where they stacked infantry four rows deep. To reach the Confederates, the Union troops had to advance through the town, descend into an open, shallow valley, cross a water-filled ditch, and climb a gentle rise for 400 yards to reach the base of the hill. A Southern gunner said “A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it.”
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The original sunken road and stone wall. |
On December 13, at noon, Burnside started sending in troops. The men who were not killed by artillery on the hill as they emerged from the town were mowed down by infantry behind the stone wall. Southern infantry had three men loading for every man firing, keeping up a ceaseless hail of lead. 3,000 Union troops fell in an hour, but Burnside kept sending more in, wave after wave, until darkness fell. Observing from the hill, Lee turned to Longstreet and said, "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it." Further down the line, a 24 year-old Alabamian, Major John Pelham, moved two small guns into a badly exposed position along the Richmond Stage Road perpendicular to the Union axis of march. He ignored orders from General J.E.B. Stuart to disengage and continued to disrupt the Union formations for almost an hour. He serviced the cannon himself after most of his crew was killed, and only retired when he ran out of ammunition. General Lee, watching the action from Prospect Hill, remarked, "it is glorious to see such courage in one so young."
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Marye's Heights and the Stone Wall |
Fredericksburg Cemetery |
Not one Union soldier laid a hand on the stone wall that day.
That night, the infantry of both sides slept on their guns in the battlefield. The Union had suffered horrible losses. The cries of the wounded “weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear" rang out in the cold. Then something happened that caused amazement and wonder. The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, appeared in the sky. This was, and is, almost unheard of this far south, and most of the men in the field had never seen it and had no idea what it was. The Southerners took it as a sign from God that they were blessed and that the Southern cause was just. Many of the Northerners, seeing the slaughter of the day, took it the same way.
Southern casualties that day were 5,300; Union losses were a staggering 12,600, two-thirds of them in front of the stone wall.
By noon, we had seen the stone wall, driven past miles of Confederate trenches, hiked up to Lee's command post, and seen the southern end of the Confederate line. Eric had to be home in two days. There were still many sites that we had intended to visit around Richmond, but we felt emotionally overwhelmed with all that we had seen so far. When the trip had started, I had laid out lots of mountain riding in West Virginia, which we simply did not have time for. We did, however, have time for some riding in North Carolina to refresh our souls. So we grabbed a gourmet lunch at Waffle House, then jumped on I 95 to I 85 to I 40, and rode until dark, which came at Clemmons, NC, where we found a Holiday Inn Express. We asked the desk clerk which of the two restaurants by the hotel (Italian or Mexican) was best, she said Italian. We walked in and were prepared to be disappointed by the looks of the dining room...not bad but not great. Then we looked at the menu and prepared to be well fed; there must have been 50 selections or more! We both ended up with chicken with a white wine crème sauce and capers over pasta, which was out of this world. We struck up a conversation with the waiter and found out that they were family owned, and they were Mexican! (The languages are similar, why not the cooking, eh?) He said the cook had done Italian in San Francisco for 20 years. If you are ever in Clemmons, NC, go to I Bambini, right off the interstate on Lewisville-Clemmons Road, NC 1103. www.ibambiniitaliaanrestaurant.com.
When we got back to the room we channel surfed until we found a HILARIOUS mock-u-mentary on Anna Nichole Smith on Showtime. We turned in around midnight.
Stats: 308 miles, moving average 69 MPH, overall average 58 MPH, moving time 5:13, maximum speed 94.7