The Battle of Fredericksburg: We Cannot Escape History

by James K. Bryant II

The Battle of Fredericksburg is known as the most disastrous defeat the Federal Army of the Potomac experienced in the American Civil War. The futile assaults by Federal soldiers against the Confederate defensive positions on Marye's Heights and behind the infamous stone wall along the Sunken Road" solidified Ambrose Burnside's reputation as an inept army commander and reinforced Robert E. Lee's undefeatable image. Follow historian James Bryant behind the lines of confrontation to discover the strategies and blunders that contributed to one of the most memorable battles of the Civil War."

Genres: Civil War

192 pages, Paperback

First published July 16, 2010

Reviews

[Anita Kretzmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very close look at one Civil War battle, with a lot of detail and fascinating information, especially about the major military characters on both sides. For me, learning about the personal connections between many of the players was the best part of reading this. Also, the photographs are fairly well reproduced and it’s wonderful to put faces with the names. The maps are not as good—small and poorly reproduced. I relied on maps in an Atlas of Civil War Battles to be able to make sense of the action.
The worst part of reading this was the fact that it’s full of typos and misspellings. Examples: the Marye family and Marye’s heights sometimes called Mayre’s (once, both spellings appear in one caption); Joseph E. Johnston called “Johnson” several times; the word “gambit” used when “gamut” was meant—twice; “lay” used in place of “lie”; etc., etc. Apparently there was no editor involved and the book (by extension, maybe the whole series?) could have benefitted hugely from a good one. There is no index, so no way to, for example, look up the first appearance of any person. That would have been helpful since the text is extremely dense with names. I found myself flipping back and forth a lot.
If you have a good general knowledge of Civil War history, and you want more detail about specific events, this book (and series) might work well for you. Just be forewarned about the writing and word usage!

[Arlen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good description of the battle of Fredericksburg that included important discussions of the political issues leading up to the battle. I learned a number of things regarding Lincoln's feelings on emancipation prior to his formal issuing of the proclamation. Regarding the battle, the Union forces gambled on gaining ground moving toward Richmond before true winter set in, and also dealt with a new commander (Burnside) organizing a major campaign just after being put in charge of the Army of the Potomac. The eventual disaster for the Union was mainly due to delays in getting vital equipment to the field and miscommunications in orders. Lee's army on the other hand used the extra time to prepare an impenetrable defense on the heights above Fredericksburg. On the downside of the book, it depended much too much on verbal descriptions of detailed battlefield positions and movements that were impossible to follow without decent maps to look at. (I printed out maps from the Civil War Trust web site in order to follow the evolution of the battle.) The maps provided were nearly unreadable. The author also gave, I thought, too much detail on biographies of nearly every division commander on both sides of the line. I did appreciate his pointing out personal relationships between commanders, like between Burnside and Hooker, that influenced battlefield decisions.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought that this was a book well written about the events leading up to and during the battle of Fredericksburg.