For six weeks after Antietam, McClellan seemed to make little effort to resume the campaign against Lee. Lincoln tired of waiting; on November 5 he replaced McClellan with Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside.
[Illustration: Fredericksburg, viewed from Federal gun emplacements north of the city. The battle occurred on the heights in the left background.]
“I am not competent to command such a large army,” Burnside stated. He demonstrated this truth in his one battle at the head of the Army of the Potomac. On December 13, a freezing Saturday, Burnside ordered six grand assaults against Lee’s entrenched army on the heights overlooking Fredericksburg, Va. The result was a useless slaughter, and a defeated Burnside wept over the killing and wounding of 10,000 of his men. Confederate losses were less than half that number.
A few weeks later Burnside attempted a secret march around Lee’s left (western) flank. The Federal army bogged down in winter mud and made barely a mile a day. This “Mud March” finished Burnside. He soon relinquished command to Gen. Joseph Hooker, a strong-willed officer known to the soldiers as “Fighting Joe.”
Cavalry raids by both sides occupied the early months of this third year of conflict. One of the longest was that of Col. Benjamin H. Grierson and 17,000 Federal horsemen. Leaving La Grange, Tenn., in April, Grierson’s troopers wrecked railroads and supply depots all the way to Baton Rouge, La. The raid lasted two weeks and helped clear the way for Grant’s campaign against Vicksburg.
[Illustration: Two of the Confederacy’s celebrated cavalry leaders were Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Hunt Morgan. Forrest was a semi-illiterate with no prior military training. But he became a fearless fighter and an unequalled cavalry commander.]
[Illustration: Morgan led an independent group of horsemen known popularly as “Kentucky Cavaliers.” He was ambushed and killed at Greenville, Tenn., in 1864.]
On the other hand, Gen. Bedford Forrest and his Confederate cavalry made a series of quick attacks in Tennessee throughout March and April. Gen. John Hunt Morgan followed this with a summer foray through Kentucky, southern Indiana, and across Ohio.
Throughout the first half of 1863 Grant slowly tightened the noose around Vicksburg. Moving down the west bank of the Mississippi and crossing below Vicksburg, Grant won clear victories at Port Gibson (May 1), Raymond (May 12), Jackson (May 14), Champion’s Hill (May 16), and Big Black River (May 17). On May 18 Grant began his siege of Vicksburg itself, and for six weeks the Federals isolated Gen. John C. Pemberton and his Vicksburg defenders. Confederate soldiers inside the besieged city eventually found it necessary to eat rats, mules and grass in an effort to stay alive.
