When was the Second Battle of Fredericksburg?

On 3 May 1863, the same day as the heaviest fighting at Chancellorsville a few miles to the west.

Who won the Second Battle of Fredericksburg?

The Union. Sedgwick's Sixth Corps took Marye's Heights from Jubal Early's Confederates, but it was stopped later that day at Salem Church and the wider campaign ended in a Confederate victory.

How did the Union take Marye's Heights in 1863?

After a first assault failed, a short truce to collect the wounded let Union soldiers see that the Confederate line was thin, and a second attack carried the stone wall and the heights.

What happened at Salem Church?

Confederates under Cadmus Wilcox, reinforced by Lafayette McLaws, held a ridge around the church west of Fredericksburg and threw back Sedgwick's advance on the afternoon of 3 May. The church then became a field hospital.

How many men were lost at Second Fredericksburg?

The American Battlefield Trust estimates about 1,800 casualties: some 1,100 Union and 700 Confederate.

Second Battle of Fredericksburg, 1863: Sedgwick takes Marye's Heights

“St. Mary's [Marye's] Heights, Fredericksburg, captured by Sedgwick”, albumen print, 1863, Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Quick answer

What happened at the Second Battle of Fredericksburg?

On 3 May 1863, while the main armies fought at Chancellorsville, Major General John Sedgwick's Union Sixth Corps attacked the Confederates of Jubal Early holding the heights behind Fredericksburg. A first assault on Marye's Heights failed, but a brief truce let Union officers see how thin the line was, and a second attack carried the stone wall and the ridge. Marching west to join Hooker, Sedgwick was then stopped at Salem Church, and the next days forced him back across the Rappahannock.¹

In December 1862 the stone wall at the foot of Marye's Heights had cost the Union army thousands of men and its commander his reputation. Five months later Union troops took the same wall in a single morning. The victory did not save the campaign it was part of, but it showed how much the battle depended on numbers in the right place.²

Hooker's plan

After Ambrose Burnside's defeat at Fredericksburg and the failed Mud March, Lincoln gave the Army of the Potomac to Joseph Hooker. Hooker's plan for the spring of 1863 was a double blow. He would march most of the army upriver, cross the Rappahannock and the Rapidan and come down on Robert E. Lee from the west, while Sedgwick, with about 23,000 men, stayed in front of Fredericksburg to hold Lee in place. Lee would be crushed between them or forced to retreat.³ › Robert E. Lee

Lee did neither. Leaving Jubal Early with about 10,000 men to watch Sedgwick, he turned west with the rest of his army and met Hooker in the Wilderness around Chancellorsville. On the night of 2 May Hooker ordered Sedgwick to cross the river, move west toward Chancellorsville and "attack and destroy any force you may fall in with on the road".⁴

Marye's Heights

Sedgwick crossed at dawn on 3 May and was joined by John Gibbon's division. He first meant to strike the two ends of Marye's Heights, but a canal and a stream blocked the way, so the attack fell on the Confederate center, held by William Barksdale's Mississippi brigade behind the same stone wall that had stopped Burnside.⁵

The first assault was beaten back. Then came the moment that decided the day. Colonel Thomas Griffin of the 18th Mississippi granted a short truce so the Union could gather its wounded, and during it Union soldiers were able to see how weakly the Confederate right was held. The second attack, led by regiments such as the 5th Wisconsin and the 6th Maine, broke through, drove the Confederates off the ridge and captured guns and prisoners. Barksdale tried to rally on Lee's Hill but had to fall back to the south.⁶

Salem Church

Sedgwick paused to reorganize, which gave the Confederates time to form a new line. About three miles west of Fredericksburg, along the road to Chancellorsville, Cadmus Wilcox's Alabama brigade took position on a low wooded ridge crowned by Salem Church, a plain brick Baptist church built in 1844, with sharpshooters in its upper gallery. Lee sent Lafayette McLaws from Chancellorsville to reinforce it, and the National Park Service puts the Confederates on the ridge at about 10,000.⁷

In the late afternoon Union brigades attacked up the slope through dense undergrowth. A Union soldier remembered a tremendous roar of musketry from an unseen enemy about a hundred feet away. Near the church the Federals briefly gained the crest and broke the Confederate line, but Confederates hidden in a road cut behind it sprang up and counterattacked, driving them back down the slope. Colonel E. Burd Grubb of the 23rd New Jersey had his horse shot under him and led his men on foot.⁸

The church as hospital

That night Salem Church became a field hospital. One eyewitness, quoted by the National Park Service, described hundreds of wounded crowding the building and the churchyard, amputated limbs piled almost as high as a man could reach, and blood flowing along the aisles. Of 126 Union soldiers buried at the church in 1863, only six rest in identified graves today.⁹

The end of the campaign

On 4 May more Confederates came from Chancellorsville, and Sedgwick's position grew worse; he recrossed the Rappahannock that night. With no hope of relief from Sedgwick, Hooker withdrew his own army across the river on the night of 5 May, ending the Chancellorsville campaign in defeat.¹⁰

The American Battlefield Trust counts about 1,100 Union and 700 Confederate casualties at Fredericksburg on 3 May. For a single day the Union had won back the ground it had bled for in December. It held it for less than two days, and Lee, emboldened by his victory, turned north toward Pennsylvania and Gettysburg.¹¹