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From: Harrison

In a recent post about the Upper Pontoon Crossing on Fredericksburg’s Rappahannock riverfront, I discussed how an oft-published Alfred Waud sketch, whose location had never been pinpointed definitively, could not be a depiction of the fighting sparked by the Union effort to build a bridge there on December 11, 1862.  I based my ruling-out in part on my inability to corroborate the existence of a particular building, shown in Waud’s sketch as advanced from its neighbors and sporting a lower component that extends to the left of a higher component, with the buildings shown in other wartime pictures of the Upper-crossing area.  The Library of Congress’ high-resoultion scans of the Waud sketch may be accessed here.

In revisiting the subject now, we’ll call Waud’s mystery structure “Building One”:
 

My post went on to speculate that the sketch was evidently not a depiction of the Middle Pontoon Crossing (a mile downstream from the Upper crossing), where Union engineers that same December day completed a 440-foot bridge in the wake of a trans-Rappahannock assault by the 89^th New York Infantry.  The bridge connected a ferry-landing adjacent to the site of George Washington’s boyhood home, “Ferry Farm,” in Stafford County, to a point along the Fredericksburg wharves on the opposite side of the Rappahannock. 

More specifically, I ruled-out as a subject for the sketch the likeliest target of Union bridge-builders seeking to connect to those wharves:  an area where a photograph from early 1863 shows that a particular building is advanced noticeably from its neighbors but lacks both the design of Building One and the configuration of a row of structures that Waud sketched to the right and rear of Building One.  We’ll call the structure in the photograph “Building Two”: 

For the Middle Pontoon Crossing, my idea of a “likeliest” target-zone for the Union bridge-builders in December 1862 was derived in part from a Union map entitled Position of the Divisions of Humphreys, Whipple, Griffin and Sykes at the battle of Fredericksburg, on Dec. 13th, 1862.  Here’s the section of that map that specifies the bridge-location—upstream from the foot of Berkeley Street, or “Rocky Lane”—and upon which I’ve noted the location of Building Two.  It (and not a structure with the design and neighbors of Building One) would have appeared prominently in any sketch of a bridge being built from the Stafford side of the Rappahannock towards a point upstream from Berkeley Street: 

Although I remain certain that Waud’s sketch does not depict the Upper Pontoon Crossing, I recently found cause to revise my “evidently” caveat—my doubting of the Middle Pontoon Crossing as a subject for the sketch.  While examining the backgrounds of two panoramic, wartime pictures of the town as seen from the Stafford riverbank, I suddenly noticed in each of their middlegrounds what appears to be a striking match for Waud’s Building One…sharing the wharf area with Building Two. Unlike the photograph above, the perspective of both panoramas is wide enough to show the southern third of the wharf area.

Here, below, is the first of the two: a detail of a Harper’s Weekly engraving that was based on a summer 1862 panoramic sketch by Henry Didiot of the Sixth Wisconsin Infantry:

(Although the engraving based on the Didiot sketch seems to suggest that “Building One” is actually two structures standing very close together, I will continue classifying it as a single structure for the purposes of this discussion.)

And here, below, is a detail from a pre-battle Waud sketch:  a panoramic view from November- or early-December 1862 that Harper’s later published as a woodcut:

I now needed a reliable, wartime picture that looked at the wharf-area between Buildings One and Two, head-on from across the river, rather than from the angles used in the two panoramic pictures.  Waud’s mystery sketch, after all, was a head-on view.  I also hoped to find a picture of the southern wharf-area offering more detail, since the two panoramic views diminish in specificity as they move visually away from the riverbank and into their backgrounds, towards Marye’s Heights.  Exactly what structures were behind and near Building One? 

It occurred to me that I might find the further detail and corroboration in a photograph (below) of the Federals’ Middle Pontoon Crossing canal-boat bridge.  An unknown photographer made the image sometime in June 1862, according to its handwritten caption.  The canal-boat bridge was installed on May 3, 1862 but broken apart in a flood on June 4, so this view may depict a final phase of its reassembly.  (John Hennessy has posted here about President Abraham Lincoln and his entourage crossing the bridge on May 23, 1862.)

Sure enough, the photograph turned out to offer a head-on view—at right angles to the river—that barely misses Building One (just outside the left edge) and Building Two (just outside the right edge) but does show everything in-between…including the configuration of background structures appearing behind and to the right of Building One in Waud’s sketch.

Here’s the canal-boat-bridge image, annotated to show some general landmarks: Berkeley Street/Rocky Lane, the elegant manor house of W. Roy Mason’s “Sentry Box” estate, and part of a stone wall that bordered the upper lawn along the estate’s river side: 

Courtesy of Marc and Beth Storch. Used with permission.

And here, below, are the specifics–side-by-side details of Waud’s mystery sketch, and the canal-boat photograph, showing the probable correlation of the four buildings in the sketch’s right-background to actual structures.  Note, too, the correlation of the trees:

From left to right, those four buildings are:  a dwelling with a gambrel (“Dutch”) roof and a north end-chimney that stood on the east side of Caroline Street until being demolished sometime prior to 1878 (probable close-up view, below right, in a sketch of the Federals looting in December 1862); the characteristically-narrow dwelling at number 130, which sports a south end-chimney and still stands on the west side of Caroline (May 1864 photo at below left); its duplex neighbor at 132-134 Caroline, also still extant; and what is perhaps the next (also surviving today) duplex, at 136-138 Caroline.  Note that that duplexes also appear in the sketch of the December looting.  Another post by John Hennessy discusses the full set of May 1864 photographs that depict the duplexes and their narrow neighbor-building.

To sketch this configuration of buildings, the general center of Waud’s view would have been a line about where I’ve marked one on this detail of the 1867 Michler map (red line on map, below left).  Buildings One and Two had vanished by time time the Michler map was surveyed, but it still represents the best Civil War-era documentation of the Middle Pontoon Crossing topography overall, on both sides of the river.   My estimated location for Waud’s sketching-position is indicated (red arrow, below right) on a detail of a photograph that looks in the opposite direction as the sketch and depictes the Union pontoon bridge built to connect the Stafford ferry-landing with the wharves in May 1864: 

I have devoted a sizeable amount of effort to proposing a solution to the mystery of the Waud sketch, in part as a reminder that Fredericksburg’s Battle of the Pontoons on December 11, 1862 involved contested crossings at places besides the Upper Pontoon Crossing.  More important, I hope to suggest a more precise set of locations for the combat at the Middle Pontoon Crossing that day.

First, the sketch indicates that the Federals centered their assault-crossing effort around a point on the wharves a full block south of the point implied by the Humphreys, Whipple, Griffin and Sykes map.  Second, this reorientation suggests that the now-vanished Building One (perhaps among what a Union engineer officer, in describing the construction of the bridge at the Middle Pontoon Crossing in May 1864, termed the “old buildings on the outskirts of town dismantled to obtain materials”) was in the late afternoon of December 11, 1862 the first major objective reached and seized by the 89^th New York Infantry.  

Its commander, Colonel Harrison S. Fairchild

received an order from General Burnside, directing me to detail…4 officers and 100 men, to be sent over in pontoon boats…to take possession of the houses on either side of the landing….

I immediately detailed four detachments, of 25 men each…each detachment occupying a boat, with instruction to each to land, and take a given point…covered by the fire of the right wing [of the regiment, back on the Stafford riverbank] and batteries…. Each detachment took possession of the places designated, capturing in their charge 65 prisoners…and holding these positions until the bridge was completed.

Waud’s application of “chinese white” watercolor (made from zinc-oxide pigment) atop the penciled sketch gives us a vivid depiction of the intensity of the musketry—slanting up along the terraced grounds of the Sentry Box at upper right corner—loosed by the 17^th Mississippi Infantry first upon the engineers and then upon the 89^th New York.  

Earlier in his report, Fairchild had noted that the enemy occuiped “the buildings, cellars, and stone wall opposite.”  Those portions of the Sentry Box’s uppermost grounds nearest the river were indeed bordered by a stone wall.  This, too, was likely high on the 89^th New York’s list of objectives—perhaps even the highest, along with the Sentry Box buildings, given the estate’s commanding position vis-a-vis the bridge—attesting, incidentally, to the surprisingly broad and varied nature of Fredericksburg’s collection of militarily significant stone walls. 

Note, too, the volume of smoke pouring from the Mississippi weaponry in Building One.              

Below, then, is my suggested then-and-now pairing of Waud’s sketch with a present-day view (adjusting somewhat for an abundance of modern vegetation):

As you can see, the Rappahannock this time of year is especially lovely as well as historic.  Best of all, the points from which the Federals built their Middle Pontoon Crossing bridge in December 1862, and in other years, and from which Waud created a classic of military art are preserved and open to the public as part of George Washington’s Boyhood Home at Ferry Farm, by The George Washington Foundation.  So by all means pay them a visit and enjoy the many layers of history there, including one of the more evocative but lesser-known places on the Fredericksburg battlefield.

Special thanks to David Muraca of the George Washington Foundation, for granting my 11^th-hour request for modern photographs with his usual graciousness; Kerri Barile, Ph.D., of Dovetail Cultural Resource Group, for documentation of the Sentry Box stone wall—part of Dovetail’s detailed study of the extraordinary history and resources of that estate; and to Marc and Beth Storch for permitting my use of their photograph.  

Noel G. Harrison

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