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So Close to the Enemy
Description:
Civil War artist Mort Kunstler recored a little-known event at the 1862 battle of Fredericksbnurg when Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson slipped through the snow to make their own reconnaissance of the opposing army.
750 Numbered and signed lighographic prints.
Image size: 19" x 26"
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Product Features
It was a daring reconnaissance - and an immeasurable risk. On December 12, 1862, as the massive Norther Army of the Potomac under General Ambrose E Burnside prepared to assault the Southern lines at Fredericksburg, General Robert E. Lee concluded that he needed additional reconnaissance of the enemy - and decided to do it himself. Accompanied by his "right arm" - General Stonewall Jackson - and Major Johann Heros von Borcke, Lee moved cautiously through the snow toward Northern lines. Closer and closer, the high ranking observers moved - until they were within approximately four hundred yards of the Federal advance line. Despite the danger, Lee studied the enemy in front of him until he could tarry no more. The next day, the giant Northern army would come forward in an attempt to destroy Lee's army. The battle that followed was one of the bloodiest of the war - and one of the greatest disasters to befall the Union army.
The unknown irony of the battle was that the Confederate commander, camouflaged in the snow-covered landscape, conducted a personal reconnaissance within easy range of the Union artillery. Lee, Jackson and vonBorcke, were "so close to the enemy" as vonBorcke noted - that the outcome of the battle could have been changed by a single vigilant Norther observer. Undiscovered in his bold foray, Lee directed one of his most significant victories of the war.
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