A Bloody Crossing

At 3 a.m. on December 11, 1862, church bells in Fredericksburg tolled as Union engineers struggled to bring pontoon boats to the river's edge there and build two of the six floating bridges the Army of the Potomac needed to cross the Rappahannock. For two hours they worked in darkness, hoping to finish before Confederate sharpshooters on the opposite bank saw them, but at 5 a.m. musket fire erupted from cellars and windows across the river. Engineers who were not shot dropped for cover on the shore while Union cannon on the heights answered with an eight-hour bombardment that devastated the city but did not silence the Confederates. Only by ferrying troops across the river under fire could the Union army drive the Confederates from the town and finish the bridges. Sergeant Clark Baurer of the 50th NY Engineers, watching the bridge builders about to come under fire, recalled, "Such a feeling of anxiety and suspense I never experienced. I could scarcely breathe."

Fredericksburg, Virginia · United States