How Lincoln Almost Lost it All

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

History, Society & Culture

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🗓️ 6 December 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

December 11, 1862. Union Army engineers are urgently constructing a bridge, one that will carry soldiers into the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, a Confederate stronghold. Union leaders are banking on the element of surprise and are desperate for a victory. But, by the time it’s over, more than a thousand Union soldiers will perish in one of the worst defeats of the Civil War. How does the failed Battle of Fredericksburg threaten the future of the Emancipation Proclamation and Abraham Lincoln’s very presidency? And how does Lincoln manage to save both?

Special thanks to our guest Professor John Matteson, author of "A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:06.0	History this week, December 11th, 1862. I'm Sally Hone.
0:17.0	Four o'clock in the morning, a heavy fog lies over the Rapa Hanna River.
0:22.0	It's cold, about 20 degrees, and small groups of Union Army engineers begin a
0:29.6	laborious task. They're trying to build a series of bridges. They maneuver boats into
0:36.6	place side by side, and then lay down long planks between those boats, making a
0:42.2	puntune bridge. The plan is that 100,000 Union soldiers will cross these bridges into the town of
0:50.6	Fredericksburg, Virginia, and take it over. It's a key battle, not just for military reasons,
0:57.6	but also for political ones. President Lincoln has just put out a preliminary
1:02.6	version of the Emancipation Proclamation, which will declare that all enslaved people in
1:08.6	Confederate states are free. But to make that proclamation a reality, he needs a
1:14.6	military victory behind him. The foggy weather is good news for the Union, because on
1:21.6	the other side of the Rapa Hanna, the Confederate Army lies in wait. They're hidden in
1:26.6	houses and gardens and churches and behind stone walls, watching that foggy river,
1:32.6	waiting for a clear shot. Around five o'clock in the morning, one
1:39.6	Union engineer, Captain Wesley Brainerd, is standing in the middle of the water at the
1:43.6	front end of the bridge. He's looking towards the Confederate shore, when the fog
1:47.6	briefly lifts. He writes, I saw what for the moment almost chilled my blood, a long
1:55.6	line of arms moving rapidly up and down. Confederate guns pointed right at him.
2:02.6	The fog quickly covers them again, but he knows his men are in trouble. Soon after,
2:09.6	Brainerd is now in a fog of bullets. He writes, they went whizzing and
2:18.6	spitting by and around me, pattering on the bridge, splashing into the water,
	...

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