Richard Kirkland and Marye’s Heights
In a war which in known for the bloodiness of its battles and its lengthy casualty lists, the Battle of Fredericksburg, fought in December, 1862, stands out. Union casualties outnumbered those of the Confederacy by about three to one. The Union commander, Ambrose Burnside, ordered one assault after another on fortified positions on high ground, and could not grasp the devastation being wrought upon his army as a result. A Cincinnati newspaper wrote of the battle, “It can hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor or generals to manifest less judgment than were perceptible on our side that day.”
The acme of the battle was the Union Army’s assault on the Confederate positions on Marye’s Heights, which overlooked the city of Fredericksburg. The advancing Union troops had to cross open fields, a canal which forced them to bunch up to use the bridges over it, around scattered houses and outbuildings, and finally up the slopes themselves. The Confederates had placed scattered abatis’ and other obstacles to impede the assault, and the Union would be under artillery fire all the way, absorbing musket and rifle fire as they became to climb the slope.
The slaughter was frightful. Approximately 8,000 casualties were absorbed by the Union Army as Burnside stubbornly refused to change his tactics. Divisions were sent forth individually to be wrecked by the Confederate fire. Only the coming of nightfall, which comes early in December, brought the destruction of the Union army to a halt. When it became dark those wounded lying in the field and the slopes who were able to walk withdrew. They left behind thousands of other wounded, who screamed in pain and cried out for water throughout the night.
The cries for water were particularly disturbing to Sergeant Richard Kirkland of the Confederate Army as he tried to sleep atop Marye’s Heights. The morning of December 14 revealed the thousands of wounded who still lay under the Confederate guns. Kirkland informed his superiors that he wished to aid the wounded. He was not allowed to display a flag of truce. Nonetheless he grabbed several canteens and leapt over a wall to reach some of the wounded men, immediately drawing sniper fire from Union sharpshooters in Fredericksburg. Ignoring the gunshots, he began distributing water to the wounded men.
As it became apparent what he was doing the sniper fire ceased. Kirkland went back and forth from the Confederate lines to the wounded men most of that day, providing water, blankets, and what other comforts he could. Kirkland’s efforts were not mentioned in his unit’s official reports of the battle and he was never cited for his humanitarian effort, but those wounded he helped that survived never forgot him and he became known as the “Angel of Marye’s Heights.” It would be nice to report that he survived the war, but he did not. He was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863.