This second stinging raid roused the loyal North to fury; and by November a new invasion of Virginia was in full swing on the old ground, with McClellan at Warrenton, Lee at Culpeper, and Jackson in the Valley.
But McClellan's own last chance had gone. Late at night on the seventh he was sitting alone in his tent, writing to his wife, when Burnside asked if he could come in with General C.P.
Buckingham, the confidential staff officer to the War Department.
After some forced conversation Buckingham handed McClellan a paper ordering his supersession by Burnside. McClellan simply said: "Well, Burnside, I turn the command over to you." The eighth and ninth were spent in handing over; and on the tenth McClellan made his official farewell. Next day he was entraining at Warrenton Junction when the men, among whom he was immensely popular, broke ranks and swarmed round his car, cursing the Government and swearing they would follow no one but their "Old Commander." McClellan, with all his faults in the field, was a good organizer, an extremely able engineer, a very brave soldier, a very sympathetic comrade in arms, and a regular father to his men, whose personal interests were always his first care. The moment was critical. McClellan, had he chosen, might have imitated the Roman generals who led the revolts of Praetorian Guards. But he stepped out on the front platform of the car, held up his hand, and, amid tense silence, asked the men to "stand by General Burnside as you have stood by me." The car they had uncoupled to prevent his departure was run up and coupled again;and then, amid cheers of mournful farewell, they let him go.
General Ambrose E. Burnside was expected to smash Lee, take Richmond, and end the war at once. He was a good subordinate, but quite unfit for supreme command, which he accepted only under protest. Moreover, he was not supported as he should have been by the War Department, nor even by the Headquarter Staff. While changing his position from Warrenton to Fredericksburg he was hampered by avoidable delays. So when he reached Falmouth he found Lee had forestalled him on the opposing heights of Fredericksburg itself.
The disastrous thirteenth of December was dull, calm, and misty.
But presently the sun shone down with unwonted warmth; the mists rolled up like curtains; and there stood 200,000 men, arrayed in order of battle: 80,000 Confederates awaiting the onslaught of 120,000 Federals.
On came the solid masses of the Federals, eighty thousand strong, with forty in support, amid the thunder of five hundred attacking and defending guns. The sunlight played upon the rising tide of Federal bayonets as on sea currents when they turn inshore. The colors waved proudly as ever; and to the outward eye the attack seemed almost strong enough to drive the stern and silent gray Confederates clear off the crest. But the indispensable morale was wanting. For this was the end of a long campaign, full of drawn battles and terrible defeats. Burnside was an unpopular substitute for McClellan; he was not in any way a great commander; and he was acting under pressure against his own best judgment. His army knew or felt all this; and he knew they knew or felt it. The Federals, for all their glorious courage, felt, when the two fronts met at Fredericksburg, that they were no more than sacrificial pawns in the grim game of war. After much useless slaughter they reeled back beaten. But they could and did retire in safety, skillfully "staffed" by their leaders and close to their unconquerable sea.
Lee could make no counterstroke. The Confederate Government had not dared to let him occupy the far better position on the line of the North Anna, from which a vigorous counterstroke might have almost annihilated a beaten attacker, who would have been exposed on both flanks, beyond the sure protection of the sea. Thus fear of an outcry against "abandoning" the country between Fredericksburg and the North Anna caused the Southern politicians to lose their chance at home. But without a decisive victory they could not hope for foreign intervention. So losing their chance at home made them lose it abroad as well.
Burnside was dazed by his defeat and the appalling loss of life in vain. But after five weeks of most discouraging inaction he tried to surprise Lee by crossing the Rappahannock several miles higher up. On the twentieth and twenty-first of that miserable January the Federal army ploughed its dreary way through sloughs of gluey mud under torrents of chilling rain. Then, when the pace had slackened to a funereal crawl, and the absurdly little chance of surprising Lee had vanished altogether, this despairing "Mud March" came to its wretched end. Four days later Burnside was superseded by one of his own subordinates, General Joseph Hooker, known to all ranks as "Fighting Joe Hooker."Fredericksburg, the spell of relaxing winter quarters beside the fatal Rappahannock, and then the fatal "Mud March," combined to lower Federal morale. Yet the mass of the men, being composed of fine human material, quickly recovered under "Fighting Joe Hooker," who knew what discipline meant. Numbers and discipline tell. But disciplined numbers were not the only or even the greatest menace to the South. For here, as farther west, the Confederate Government was beginning to be foolish just as the Federal Government showed signs of growing wise. Lincoln and Stanton were giving Joe Hooker a fairly free hand just when Davis and Seddon (his makeshift minister of war) were using Confederate forces as puppets to be pulled about by Cabinet strings from Richmond. Here again (as later on at Chattanooga) Longstreet was sent away on a useless errand just when he was needed most by Lee. Good soldier though he was in many ways he was no such man as Stonewall Jackson; and, in this one year, he failed his seniors thrice.