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The battle that saved the South--for a time, at least--in 1862 Confederates IN THE ATTIC On Dec. 13, 1862, the Battle of Fredericksburg began. What it meant then, and now, cannot be forgotten.

December 11, 2005 12:51 am

BLACKSBURG--"Fierce battle & glorious victory at Freder- icksburg on Saturday last," wrote a Confederate officer stuck in the backwater of southwest Virginia in the winter of 1862.

Like so many throughout the Confederacy who were not serving in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, this man could only experience "glorious victory" vicariously, by readings and rumors filtering back from the front of the only Confederate army that consistently brought good news to the South.

While the Battle of Fredericksburg certainly holds intrinsic interest on its own, its symbolic impact was arguably far more important. It was the first battle fought by Lee since his repulse in the Maryland Campaign three months before. He had spent a full day there repelling assaults by a substantially larger Union army in the Battle of Antietam, making it arguably a tactical success for the Confederates--but only because Lee had gotten himself into such a perilous trap that any outcome short of annihilation constituted victory.

Still, the invincible Army of Northern Virginia's first invasion of the North had been almost a complete failure. Lee needed a victory in his next fight to renew his confidence, and that of his army, and his people.

Moreover, since the next fight at Fredericksburg was on home soil, Southern victory was even more imperative--for everywhere else on the Confederacy the news was unrelentingly gloomy. The year 1862 saw the Confederates losing their toehold in Kentucky, most of central and west Tennessee, New Orleans, Memphis, and most of the Mississippi.

Lee had ejected two Union invasions that spring and summer, but the Yankees still held an irritating base at Fort Monroe, and had established bases on the coasts of the Carolinas. A major campaign to retake Kentucky failed embarrassingly just three weeks after the defeat at Antietam.

Fredericksburg, in short, was the only solid good news of the season.

Yet if Fredericksburg was more than just another victory for the South, it was also more than just another defeat for the North.

It was the first outing for a new general leading the Army of the Potomac.

Even after being deservedly relieved of command following his failure to capitalize on Antie-tam, George B. McClellan still enjoyed huge popularity in his former army--and was the darling of Lincoln's political opponents. His successor, Ambrose Burnside, needed a victory to secure his own hold on his position, and to help Lincoln keep McClellan and his supporters at bay.

The defeat at Fredericksburg hardly served either end.

Burnside has been declared by one student of military incompetence to be the worst general in history--yet in fact he planned an excellent campaign, and got the jump on Lee, which several Union commanders managed to do during the war.

Logistical failure beyond his control prevented Burnside from getting his army across the Rappahannock before Lee arrived. What might have happened, if Lee had to face in the open field the largest army ever seen in this hemisphere, is anyone's guess.

The difference between the two men was that when he got himself into a tight spot, Lee exploded with imagination. Burnside could not adapt to circumstances, and instead resorted to blind and brutish persistence. He may not have been the worst general who ever lived, but he was certainly the worst ever faced by Lee.

The nonmilitary ramifications of the engagement were far more significant than Lee's easiest victory of the war over an inept opponent. The battle on the Rappahannock was the first major clash of arms east of the Appalachians since Abraham Lincoln used the Union success in Maryland as pretext to issue his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln, like everyone else, realized that just as he needed battlefield success to give moral authority to the Proclamation, so too would he need more successes to give it legitimacy.

Thus, while he always coveted victories, he needed one in Virginia against Lee even more. He did not get it--and the failure risked compromising much of the domestic and diplomatic impact of the Proclamation. Now that Lincoln had married his prosecution of the war to the social and humanitarian revolution of abolition, every victory was two victories, every defeat two defeats.

And, of course, the loss meant that an already war-weary Northern population faced a second war winter with little or no cheer from the front. It was a perverse situation, really, for almost everywhere west of the Appalachians the Union unstoppably eroded Confederate territory, unquestionably winning the war.

But with the two warring capitals, most of the major cities, and even more of the major press in the East, it was impossible for Lincoln to place the stalled Virginia front in context in the public mind with all that was going so well to the west.

The fresh elections in November saw Democratic victories in important governorships and legislative majorities in some Northern states--and though Lincoln's party still held Congress, every defeat made their hold less sure. Should the Democrats be resurgent, then every battlefield defeat only strengthened their hand in another fight coming in November, 1864.

The likely weapon they would use would be that same McClellan. Already Lincoln and his friends feared that that contest could be not just for the White House, but for the life of the Union itself.

None doubted that almost two years after the guns at Fredericksburg were stilled, their echoes would still be heard all across the continent.