This has the reputation of being the best book on the Fredericksburg campaign, and it is not hard to see why.

A reluctant Ambrose Burnside replaced George McClellan as commander of the Army of The Potomac, and immediately began planning an active campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia. He moved swiftly across Virginia to Fredericksburg, where he intended to meet up with the army’s pontoon train. However, due to a comedy (or rather, a tragedy) of errors, the pontoons were delayed, and delayed again. Burnside won the race with Lee to Fredericksburg, but then had to wait for bridging while Lee came up.

Thwarted in his plans for a swift campaign, Burnside compounded the error of the pontoon train when he ordered the Army of the Potomac to cross the Rappahanock in the face of Lee’s army. He had divided the army into a number of “grand divisions”, and he ordered the Right and Left Grand Divisions into the assault. The main assault was to be made by Franklin’s Left Grand Division to to south of Fredericksburg, while Sumner’s Right Grand Division was to play a supporting role by attacking from the town itself. However, owing to a combination of poor orders from Burnside and his own incompetence, Franklin misunderstood his role and attacked with only one division, supported by another. This division, commanded by George Meade, came surprisingly close to success, but its numbers were too small, and it was driven back. Meanwhile, the Right Grand Division, originally only a support, assumed the role of main effort. It charged repeatedly against the Cofederate defenders of Marye’s Heights, and got slaughtered.

Eventually, Burnside conceded defeat and withdrew across the Rappahannock. He soon attempted to launch another offensive against Lee in a smaller version of Hooker’s later right hook, but this effort fell apart in the face of a driving rainstorm. Shortly thereafter, Burnside resigned.

The only thing missing from the book was a formal set of orders of battle for both sides, the absence of which made it impossible to determine easily which grand division a particular regiment was assigned unless that was obvious from the text. ( )

Wedged between the battles of Antietam and Chancellorsville, the battle of Fredericksburg, a forerunner of the slaughter of WWI, has received comparatively little attention. O'Reilly's treatment is a major step towards a better understanding of the battle and campaign. The author devotes considerable space to the ineptly prepared and managed river crossings and the southern battle pitting A.P. Hill vs. Meade.

Ambrose Burnside led the Army of the Potomac for a scant eighty days. Hurried into a campaign, Burnside neglected to change the command structure (which had clearly failed at Antietam, the tardy Burnside himself one of the chief culprits) and provide the necessary resources (pontoon trains). It remains a puzzle why Burnside abdictated his control during the battle and a tragedy that none of the grand divison or corps commanders stepped in. The overwhelming northern superiority in numbers was transformed into a tactical inferiority when the Northern attacks were restricted to piecemeal two brigade fronts at most. Overstaffed and underled, even usually good commanders such as John Reynolds frittered away their attention in the placing of batteries instead of coordinating and providing support. On the Southern side, Jackson's generalship and that of his divisional officers was mediocre at best. Brigade commanders were left alone to tackle the Federals. Only the Northern ineptitude of attacking without support averted a major disaster.

While O'Reilly excels in recreating the battle and the calvary of the poor Northern soldiers (ably supported by good maps), he seldom offers a discussion of the tactical possibilities and decisions which prevents the work from attaining true greatness. Nevertheless, it is the best study of Fredericksburg currently available. ( )

While there are a number of fairly recent works on the market dealing with this stepchild of a battle, O'Reilly does bring a different slant to the topic. In the first place, the title of the book does indicate a desire to treat the whole of Burnside's tenure of command as the unit of study, meaning there is some emphasis on the political pressures that lead to a winter campaign being undertaken in 1862. Two, O'Reilly does not see the doomed waves of Union infantry trying to storm the fortifications overlooking Fredericksburg, the traditional dominant motif of this battle, as being the prime element of interest. Instead, the author spends as much time on the river crossing and fighting in Fredericksburg proper, and on Meade's near-successful assault on Jackson's corps as being of rather more relevance. Finally, there is a consideration of what this battle meant for future expectations, in terms of building up the Confederate sense of mastery and inculcating in the Army of the Potomac the need to even the score. ( )