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in preventing “retaliation” or revenge on enemies and its wide-open definition of “military necessity” that, if necessary enough, could justify just about anything. But Lieber’s Code gave Lincoln and his generals what they needed as they contemplated a new war that would deliberately invade civilian lives and properties.
     
    Besides a liberal code of military conduct, Lincoln desperately needed his own Lee or Jackson to win major battles in the East, where voters and the media were concentrated. Lieber’s Code would mean little if there were no commanders willing and able to implement crushing overland campaigns with strategic sensibilities. Already Democrats had seized on unprecedented carnage and unfulfilled war goals to make sizable inroads in state and Federal midterm elections. Without victories, Lincoln stood no chance of reelection, and without great warrior generals there would be no victories.
    McClellan was not such a general, and on October 1, 1862, an angry Lincoln visited McClellan in the field and again expressed his frustrations over McClellan’s failure to pursue Lee’s retreating army. When McClellan continued to pursue the cautious path of limited war instead of crossing the Potomac while the November roads were still passable, Lincoln once again relieved McClellan of his command on November 5, and replaced him with Major General Ambrose Burnside.
    On paper, Burnside looked good. An 1847 graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Mexican and Indian wars, he had resigned from the army to form a business manufacturing firearms and had invented the breech-loading rifle. But his performance in commanding massive and complex armies in the field, where outcomes were determined by contingency and improvisation, was untested. He twice refused offers to command the Army of the Potomac, and his listless performance at Antietam, when he let Lee escape, suggests that he knew himself better than Lincoln did. But Lincoln could not stick with McClellan. The only other possible candidate, Joseph Hooker, was widely disliked by his fellow officers. So Burnside reluctantly took command of the most powerful army on the continent, if not in the world.
    In the next six weeks, Burnside confirmed his inability to command a large army with stunning finality. 4 Instead of decisively moving his massive army of 122,000 south to strike Lee’s divided army on their unprotected wings and destroy them in detail, Burnside shifted his lines east and confronted Lee’s army at the hilly town of Fredericksburg, fifty miles north of Richmond alongside the Rappahannock River. The ground behind the town was ideal for strategic defensive placements, as it rose high in the air, peaking in an area known as Marye’s Heights. Soldiers could lie six deep in a sunken road behind the stone wall, creating a virtually impenetrable barrier that, with artillery behind, could withstand any frontal assault.
    And frontal assault was exactly what Burnside planned. 5 On a chilly Saturday, December 13, just as the morning fog gave way to startling sunlight, Confederate defenders, heavily fortified with artillery of their own, watched the oncoming Army of the Potomac with awed anticipation. Thousands of Yankees with battle flags streaming marched rank upon rank up the hill in a desperate bid to dislodge Confederate defenders from their nearly perfect defenses.
    The assault was hopeless. Despite heroic charges by Burnside’s divisions, Longstreet’s line held and repulsed the Federals. None even made it to the stone wall. With inestimable bravery, if not wisdom, Federals continued to charge until nightfall, leaving behind a field stacked three deep in casualties. Finally, after fourteen separate brigade-size attacks, the Federals retreated, leaving piles of their dead in front of the stone wall.
    Still unable to accept the full horror of his failed assaults, Burnside contemplated renewed assaults the next day. His officers persuaded him to revoke