Notable Events that Happened During the Christmas Season (Dec 16, 2024 - Part 3)

by Scott Sosebee

This continues the Christmas Season series

This week we will continue with our “snapshots” of historical events that occurred during the Christmas Holiday season.

Battle of Fredericksburg (1862)

The Civil War was, without a doubt, the most terrible war in our history. It was the costliest war in terms of loss of life as an estimated 620,000 men died in the line of duty. The primary cause of those horrible casualties lay in the fact that the Civil War was the first “modern war.” It was the first war to use armaments such as repeating rifles, breechloading arms, and automated weapons like the Gatling gun. It was also the first conflict to use rifled weapons in a large context, increasing the accuracy of small arms, and also more accurate and deadly artillery. However, many of the generals on both sides prosecuted the war using earlier tactics, ones more attuned to muzzle-loading, single-shot, smooth-bore weapons, which were not nearly as accurate as those being carried by soldiers on both sides of the conflict. In short, many of the strategies employed during the war led to thousands killed in every battle. Most Americans have a knowledge of battles such as Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, and Bull Run, but one that is perhaps not as well known but should be was the Battle of Fredericksburg, fought near the town of the same name in Northern Virginia in 1862. With over 200,000 combatants, it was the engagement with the greatest number of combined troops employed than any other in the war.

The early years of the Civil War in the Eastern theater were not a favorable time for Union troops as they were stung by a number of defeats at the hands of the Confederate troops, but the Union had achieved at least a nominal victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland on September 17, 1862. Union General George McClellan had defeated Confederate Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North that terrible day, but because he had failed to aggressively pursue Lee’s army, President Abraham Lincoln removed him from command of the Army of the Potomac. He replaced McClellan with Major General Ambrose Burnside. Burnside fashioned a bold plan that depended on speed. He and his army would make a quick dash toward the lower Rappahannock River and get between Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate capital of Richmond. The plan depended on speed, and primarily because of a delay in bridge-building materials Burnside’s army didn’t move fast enough. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia took favorable positions and on December 11-15 inflicted another crushing defeat on the Union Army. As a result, Burnside was removed and replaced with Joseph Hooker in January 1863. He didn’t perform much better and Lincoln went back to McClellan, then George Meade, before bringing Ulysses S. Grant from the west to lead the Union to victory.

Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment Outlawing Slavery (December 1865)

The final conclusion of the terrible Civil War answered two vital questions facing the American nation in 1861. One was that secession was, in fact, if not purely illegal that any attempt to do so would be met with the strongest amount of resistance. President Lincoln had made it clear that secession would be something that the federal government would oppose with every ounce of strength it had. Also, the Union victory over the Confederacy meant that the enslavement of African-descent people in the United States was over and would categorically cease to exist within this nation. In order to enshrine such a law, the Constitution of the United States had to be amended to specifically outlaw the practice. The United States Senate had pushed through an Amendment in April 1864, but the legislation had stalled in the U.S. House. President Lincoln and his allies in the Republican Party had to overcome not just some opposition to such a law, but also in the opposing Democratic Party to obtain House approval. He and his allies went to work on securing such an Amendment even before Lincoln was sworn in for his second term (which he won over his former general George McClellan in November 1864), a campaign that achieved success when the House passed their approval in January 1865. The Amendment then went to the states, and on December 6, 1865, when Georgia—which was required to do so to be re-admitted to the Union—ratified the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865, it was then official—the enslavement of people of African descent was no more in the United States.

Stars and Stripes Forever Written (1896)

The United States, as a nation, was founded on an ideal that “all men (humans) are created equal.” While the nation may have not always lived up to its most sacred screed, as a credo, the notion of equality has been the most celebrated facet of the notion of American nationalism. One part of such celebratory trappings are the many patriotic songs that express the love of country and our creeds so present in many of our citizens. One of the most rousing and inspirational of such tunes is “Stars and Stripes Forever,” perhaps the most well-known compositions of one of the most accomplished of all American composers, John Phillip Sousa.

Sousa, born in 1854 in Washington D.C., grew up with the backdrop of the Civil War the dominant part of his earliest childhood. He went on to become a talented musician and then the long-time director of the United States Marine Band. He became known as the “March King,” and if there was such a moniker in the 1880s and 1890s, Sousa would have certainly qualified as a “Rock Star.”

Sousa, by 1896, had formed his own musical troupe, and in December of that year, he was returning across the Atlantic from a successful tour of Europe. He explained once that he had become particularly homesick on Christmas Day, 1896 since he was away from friends and family on a holiday. His melancholy feelings for home led him to begin to form the melody and notes for what would eventually become his signature composition, “Stars and Stripes Forever,” which in 1897 became the “national march” of the United States.

We will continue with Part 4 next week!

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.