Abstract
No battle of the Civil War better demonstrated the necessity of having a commanding officer who understood the value of terrain better than the December, 1862, Battle of Fredericksburg. The geology of the Fall Zone, Neogene marine terraces, and Quaternary river terraces were exploited by Robert E. Lee on the defensive during his remarkable victory over Ambrose Burnside and the larger Army of the Potomac. Burnside had hoped to surprise Lee and the Confederacy with a quick crossing of the Rappahannock River and strike towards Richmond. Instead, his advance was delayed for more than a week when he decided to cross the river on the Coastal Plain, below the Fall Zone, instead of using the multiple fords available on the Piedmont. Pontoon boats were needed for such a crossing, and these were still in Washington DC. The result was a delay that allowed Lee to assemble his army along a geologically improved line. At the start of the battle, Burnside ordered his left Grand Division to strike the right of the Confederate line, which was dispersed along the Neogene bluffs overlooking a broad river terrace south of Fredericksburg. When this assault failed he ordered repeated attacks across flat river terraces against one of the strongest “geologically-enhanced” defensive positions found on any Civil War battleground—Marye’s Heights. These 8-m high Neogene bluffs offered elevated artillery positions and multiple locations for infantry, all above a sunken road lined with a stone wall constructed of sandstone and igneous and metamorphic rock. By the end of the day’s offensive fighting Burnside had little to show for his army’s efforts other than 12,000 casualties. Lee lost fewer than half as many men and held the bluffs above the town as Burnside retreated in utter defeat back across the Rappahannock.
“There is a stone wall up there that I want you to take. You must take it at the point of a bayonet”
—Brig. Gen. Erastus Taylor, initiating the ghastly charge of his 1st Brigade of the 3rd Division (Union V Corps) against Marye’s Heights
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- 1.
Both Grand Wing Commanders Sumner and Hooker pressured Burnside to allow just such a maneuver. Burnside demurred.
- 2.
The Union Commander reorganized his army into three “Grand Divisions”, each composed of multiple Corps. In this manner the Army of the Potomac would be easier to control, with fewer working parts under the direction of the senior officer. Lee had organized his smaller army following a similar structure, with only two or three subordinates in charge of a third or half of his army.
- 3.
If preservation is exquisite the fossil locality would be dubbed a “conservation lagerstätten”, such as the Burgess Shale of British Columbia or Solnhoffen Limestone of Bavaria. Fossil finds from these sites include soft tissue, insects, or feathers—material that is rarely preserved in the fossil record.
- 4.
Collectively, Marye’s Heights.
References
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Further Reading
Catton, B. (1960). The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War (630p). New York: American Heritage Publishing.
Debelius, M. (1996). Illustrated Atlas of the Civil War (320p). Alexandria: Time Life Books.
McPherson, J. M. (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (905p). New York: Ballantine Books.
Nosworthy, B. (2003). The bloody crucible of courage: Fighting methods and combat experience of the Civil War (753p). New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers.
O’Reilly, F. A. (2003). The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock (630p). Baton Rouge: LSU Press.
Sherwood, W. C., & Flora, S. (2002). The role of geomorphic features in the 1862 Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg. Geological Society of America – Abstracts with Programs, 34(2), A-105.
Southworth, S., Brezinski, D. K., Orndorff, R. C., Chirico, P. G., & Lagueux, K. M. (2001). Geology of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park and Potomac River Corridor, District of Columbia, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia; A, Geologic map and GIS files (disc 1); B, Geologic report and figures (disc 2). Reston: U. S. Geological Survey. Open-File Report: OF 01-0188.
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Hippensteel, S. (2019). Fredericksburg. In: Rocks and Rifles. Advances in Military Geosciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00877-2_9
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