General Burnside, immediately upon taking command, consolidated the army into three grand divisions, of two corps each. The Right, to consist of the Second corps, General Couch, and the Ninth, General Wilcox; General Sumner to command the grand division. General Hooker was placed in command of the Center division, which consisted of the Third corps, General Stoneman, and the Fifth, General Butterfield. The Left grand division consisted of the Sixth corps, under General Smith, and the First corps, under General Reynolds; General Franklin was assigned to the command.
The command of the Second division, Sixth corps, was given to Brigadier-General A. P. Howe.
At length, we resumed our march, reaching Brooks' Station the first night; then, after a day's delay, we started again. The weather was intensely cold, and the mud almost unfathomable. The troops, with much difficulty, moved about six miles, reaching the rear of Falmouth Station, opposite Fredericksburgh; but the trains, at midnight, had only proceeded two miles. In the ambulances, the sick suffered beyond description. Six soldiers from the Third brigade, Second division, died in the ambulances that night. Even the well men in camp could hardly manage to keep warm. Few persons in that vast army slept, and the ring of hundreds of axes and the falling of trees, which were to be piled on the fires, were heard all night.
The Right and Center grand divisions, had arrived in the vicinity of Falmouth several days before; and it had been the design of General Burnside to cross his army over the Rappahannock, seize the heights of Fredericksburgh, and push on toward Richmond, before the enemy could throw a sufficiently strong force in his front, to offer serious resistance. In this, doubtless, he would have been successful, but "some one had blundered," and the Commander-in-Chief suffered the mortification of seeing his plans foiled, and his series of forced marches a failure, because the pontoons which were to meet him on his arrival before Fredericksburgh were still at Washington; and this through the criminal neglect of some one. This campaign, which promised more than any previous campaign of the Army of the Potomac, was now destined to prove a failure.