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Federal Hill
Photo by author – January 2022
"… poor old Fredericksburg is a doomed city and will be reduced to ashes as we shall be forced to destroy it before leaving it in their hands"
Mentioning the name Fredericksburg brings the December 1862 battle to the forefront of most historian's thoughts. That killing field is certainly a major reason for tourism in the city and surrounding counties. But aside from the traditional draw of the battlefield, there are many lesser known, yet important, historical reminders in the city that link to the battle.
The city sits at start of the tidal waters of the Rappahannock river. It was chartered by Spotsylvania County in 1728 to provide the county with a shipping port for iron and agricultural commodities. From there, goods could easily be sailed down river, into the Chesapeake Bay and destinations beyond. As a part of the 1728 charter, the city had eight original streets with primary ones running roughly north-west to south-east parallel to the river, with commerce streets intersecting and running roughly north-east to south-west. Hanover Street, is one of the original eight streets formed by the charter and it lies in the eastern sector of town, running north east to south-west. It was named after King George I, elector of Hanover Germany after the death of Queen Ann in 1714. The land the street occupies was a part on an original colonial land grant to Thomas Royston and John Buckner in 1671.
Buckner's portion of the land was sold to Henry Willis in 1735. When Willis died, shortly after the purchase, his estate executors divided the land including what is now Hanover Street into lots. Some of those lots were sold to land developer, John Allan, who proceeded to develop a community he named Allan Town. In the latter part of the 18th century, Charles Yates acquired almost all of the land in Allan Town.
Fredericksburg expanded for the first time in 1759, and Allen Town was brought into the city limits. In 1809, Daniel Grinnan, a 19th-century merchant and real estate developer, bought a section of the former Allan Town from the estate of Charles Yates, who died earlier that year. At that time, only a few houses existed on Hanover Street. One, which had been the Yates' house, was built in the path of Charles Street, preventing the street from continuing on toward Charlotte Street.
By the time of the Civil War, Hanover Street reached the extreme southeast of the city and was considered the out-skirts of town, with a Methodist Church and eleven homes owned by doctors, lawyers, a judge, a mayor and successful merchants. The northeast end of the street begins at the river, rises at Princess Anne Street, descends to Kenmore Avenue (which was a canal during the 19th century) then rises again towards Marye's Heights. Each of the existing antebellum houses that still exist on Hanover Street has its own civil war story, but perhaps the most famous is Federal Hill.
1850 Map of Fredericksburg courtesy Fredericskburg.gov
The original eight streets are highlighted in pink
The location of Federal Hill is marked in red
Sunken Road is in green
Thomas Reade Rootes Courtesy Fredericksburg Department of Tourism
This Georgian style house with Federal details was built around 1792 by Robert Brooke, third governor of Virginia from 1794-1796. He named the home after the Federalist Party that he helped found. The house currently sets at an angle due to street realignments over the centuries. Brooks, sister, Elizabeth and her husband, Fredericksburg Mayor Fontaine Murry, lived in the house from 1794-1801. In 1801, the house was sold to Thomas Reade Rootes, a local lawyer. There, Thomas and his wife, Sarah Ring Battaile Rootes, raised their four daughters Martha A. Jaquelin Rootes Jackson, Sarah Robinson Rootes Cobb, Laura Battaile Rootes and Serena Ring Rootes Lee. By December 1862, it was owned by Fredericksburg merchant Howson Wallace.
John Addison Cobb was born about 30 miles southwest of Fredericksburg in Louisa County, on January 5th, 1783. It isn't clear when he and Sarah Rootes met, but they were married on April 11, 1812 at Federal Hill.
John Addison Cobb and Sarah Robinson Reed Roots Cobb Courtesy Library of Virginia
Cobb served in the Army during The War of 1812, and ascended to the rank of Colonel, a title he would carry the remainder of his life. Records of when and why John and Sarah moved to Georgia are questionable, but their first child, Howell, was born on September 7, 1815 in Jefferson County Georgia. The 1850 US Census list John's occupation as "None" but all indications are that he was either a wealthy planter or an attorney.
Howell Cobb. 1860. New Georgia Encyclopedia
After graduating from the University of Georgia in 1834, Howell was admitted to the bar in 1836. He served in the U.S. Congress from 1843 -1851, and was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1849 -1851. Following his term in Congress, he returned home and was elected Governor from 1851-1853. He then returned to Congress from 1855-1857. Howell's daughter Mary Ann Lamar Cobb Erwin, was responsible for creating the United Daughters of the Confederacy's Southern Cross.
In 1857, Howell was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by his friend President James Buchannan. When Abraham Lincoln was elected President, Howell returned to Georgia, urging the people to immediately succeed. In February 1861, at the first meeting of the succeeding states delegates in Montgomery, he organized the 16th. Georgia Infantry Regiment, eventually leading them as their Colonel through the Peninsula and Seven Days Campaigns, fighting at Crampon's Gap on September 14th. 1862 and three days at Antietam. His younger brother, John served in Company D as a Major and his son "Johnny" served as a Captain. Howell was detached from the Army of Northern Virginia and returned to Georgia where he was promoted to Brigadier General and placed in charge of the Georgia and Florida region. While in that position, he played a direct role in establishing the infamous Andersonville Prison. During Sherman's March to the Sea, he took part in operations to halt Wilson's raid through Alabama in the spring of 1865. After the war, he returned to his law practice and vigorously opposed reconstruction. He died while on a business trip to New York City.
Howell's birth was followed by two daughters, Laura Bataile Cobb Rutherford (1818-1889) and Mildred Lewis Cobb Glenn (1820-1900). In 1823, Sarah once again gave birth, to a son she named Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb. Thomas' birth was followed John Boswell Cobb (1826-1893); Mary Willis Cobb Johnson (1828-1899) and the last child was Sarah Martha Cobb Whitner (1831-1906)
Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb (Wikipedia)
Thomas graduated from Franklin College (now the University of Georgia) as a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. The following year, he was admitted to the bar and married Marion Lumpkin, daughter of Georgia's Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin.
Cobb was motivated to improve educational opportunities. In 1854 his sister, Laura Cobb Rutherford, appealed for a female high school in Athens Georgia, and he responded by raising money and organizing a group of trustees to form the Athens Female High School. The school opened in January 1859 and was soon renamed the Lucy Cobb Institute in honor of Cobb's eldest daughter, who died of scarlet fever at age thirteen in 1858. His niece Mildred Lewis Rutherford served the school for the next forty years. The same year the Lucy Cobb Institute opened, Cobb also established the Lumpkin Law School, with the aid of his father-in-law, at the University of Georgia.
His older brother Howell served as his mentor and from 1849 to 1857 when Thomas became a reporter of the Supreme Court of Georgia. One of his early forms of notoriety came in 1858 with his treatise on the law of slavery titled "An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America". Howell was a deeply religious man and a leader in the Presbyterian church in Athens. His legal views reflected his puritanical religious beliefs and a desire for restraint and self-control. He supported prohibition of alcohol and prostitution, and advocated forced marriage for couples caught engaging in premarital intercourse. During the late 1850s Howell urged loyalty to the Union and compromise on slavery, but after the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, he renounced his Unionist leanings.
On November 12, 1860, Thomas delivered a speech in support of immediate secession before the state legislature. He believed that the Republican victory would shift the balance of power to the North, reducing the South to a powerless minority incapable of defending both slavery and its way of life.
After Georgia seceded from the Union on January 19, 1861, Howell and Thomas were elected to the Provincial Congress of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. Thomas served on the committee that drafted the Confederate Constitution. The original manuscript is believed to be in his handwriting.
Although he lacked any formal military experience, Thomas formed Cobb's Legion (a.k.a. Georgia Legion) in August 1861, after becoming disgruntled with the Confederate Congress. The theory of a Legion appears solid but proved impractical during the Civil War and thus Cobb's Legion was reduced in organization a short time later. Initially it consisted of seven infantry companies, four cavalry troops, and a single battery – all led by Colonel Thomas Cobb until his promotion on November 1, 1862. Cobb's Legion participated in every major campaign with the Army of Northern Virginia. After suffering heavy losses during the Peninsula Campaign and at Antietam, Cobb wrote "I have lost the flower of .my battalion."
In a November 1862 letter, Thomas expressed his disgruntlement over not being promoted. He had no idea Lee had promoted him days before he wrote the letter. Following his promotion, Lee assigned him as head of his brother Howell's old brigade.
"I am only wounded boys. "Hold your ground like brave men."
General Cobb's infantry brigade reached Fredericksburg with the main thrust of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in late November 1862. They were positioned south of town along the base of Howison Hill (aka Lee's Hill or Telegraph Hill), about one-half mile to the right and rear of Marye's Heights. Cobb immediately recognized the strategic importance of the position. His love of the city and Federal Hill which he had visited throughout his life, was illustrated in a letter to his wife Marion. "If they attempt it [an enemy river crossing], poor old Fredericksburg is a doomed city and will be reduced to ashes as we shall be forced to destroy it before leaving it in their hands". He feared Federal Hill, the ancestral home of his mother and wedding site of his parents would be destroyed. The thought that enemy soldiers might destroy his mother's former home so infuriated him that he asked Lee "to raise the black flag and give no quarter to any scoundrel that crosses the river." While the Union Army, camped north of the town, on the opposite side of the Rappahannock river, awaiting the arrival of pontoon equipment and firming an attack strategy, the days passed without a sign of an attack. With no indication of movement on the part of the Union army, Cobb began to lose hope the enemy would cross the river before Spring. On December 10, he wrote his wife that he did not anticipate a battle at Fredericksburg, at least not in the near future. "Do not be uneasy about my being 'rash,'" he told her. "The bubble of reputation cannot drag me into folly. God helping me, I hope to do my duty when called upon, trusting the consequences to Him." Cobb promised his wife he would be careful. That same evening, Union engineers commenced laying the pontoon bridges as night descended on the town. The following day, December 11, thousands Union soldiers swarmed across the river and occupied the town. Furniture and personal belongings were thrown through windows into the streets, furniture was set on fire, livestock was killed and thrown into wells to contaminate the drinking water, as Union solders plundered the town's homes and businesses. A Connecticut chaplain left a graphic account of some of this shameful behavior, "I saw men break down the doors to rooms of fine houses, enter, shatter the looking glasses with the blow of the ax, [and] knock the vases and lamps off the mantelpiece with a careless swing ... A cavalry man sat down at a fine rosewood Piano ... drove his saber through the polished keys, then knocked off the top [and] tore out the strings ..."
Fredericksburg battle map used by students (Courtesy of TRR Cobb House)
Upon the first river crossing, General Lafayette McLaws ordered Cobb to move his brigade up to Marye's Heights above the town, which was fronted by a wide-open plain with few trees and houses to offer shelter to the enemy. As the battle started on December 13, 1862, Cobb's Georgia Brigade occupied a sunken road that ran along the foot of Marye's Heights. A four-foot-tall stone wall that bordered the lane provided his Georgians with a strong ready-made protection. As the Federal advance exited town, they faced a 15-foot-wide canal, open terrain, with Confederate batteries on the heights to their front. The cannel running roughly parallel to the Sunken Road lay about 1000 yards to the Georgian's front, providing a measured honing point for the Southern batteries as Federal troops slowed to cross the moat. The Union army's frontal assaults that day against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights was one of the most one-sided battles of the Civil War, with Union casualties more than twice as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates. Brigade after brigade of patriotic young men attacked but none of them reached the wall. Between attacks, the Union army pounded Marye's Heights with artillery. Cobb was standing in the Sunken Road, across from his headquarters at the Stephens House, when a Union shell came crashing through the dwelling between the first and second Union assault. As it exited the building the shell exploded.
Martha "Granny" Stephens House – NPS.gov
Shrapnel from the exploding shell wounded Cobb and killed two others standing close to the General. General Cobb's wound proved fatal when the shrapnel from the shell severed his femoral artery. Members of Cobb's staff quickly made a tourniquet in an effort to stop the blood loss and rushed the wounded warrior into the Stephens house. Doctors struggled to save the general's life, but he quickly bled to death. He is buried at Oconee Hill Cemetery in Athens, Georgia.
Marker on Sunken Road where Cobb fell. The top of the marker is nearly worn away. It read "On this spot Gen. Thomas R.R. Cobb of Georgia fell in battle Dec. 13, 1862" The front says "Cobb". – photo by author
The circumstances surrounding Cobb's death is not without controversy. One account was the shot from the cannon that killed the general came from Federal Hill, another that the shot passed though the Stephens house and exploded as it came thought the front door where Cobb was standing. Another account was that he was intentionally shot by one of his own men; yet another is that a Union sharpshooter took the General's life.
This much is indisputable; On December 13, 1862, Cobb was mortally wounded and rushed inside the Stephens house, where he bled out while leading his men along Fredericksburg's Sunken Road. The fatal shot occurred within sight of where his mother was born, Cobb was dead shortly after he received medical care. What is disputable is how he was wounded and by whom. Most historians, including staffers and former staffers at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park attribute the fatal wound to shrapnel from a federal artillery shell. Brigadier General Joseph Kershaw and Colonel Edward Porter Alexander, however, reported that Cobb was felled by a sharpshooter. Neither Kershaw or Alexander were close to Cobb, so they received their information second-hand.
Thomas Cobb's wounding was within 2,500 feet, and in 1862, within clear view of his mother's home at Federal Hill. In 1812, the house served as a school for girls. In more recent years Federal Hill was home of Dr. Richard Lanier, who was responsible for the design and construction of the Sargent Richard R. Kirkland (The Angel of Marye's Heights), Memorial near Sunken Road. Today, Federal Hill is a beautifully restored home of Doctor Charles and Stephanie Maurer. On November 25, 2014, The Wallstreet Journal ran a story on the purchase and restoration describing the handcrafted punch and dental molding, formal English garden, with walkways and handmade brick. In 2019, The Fredericksburg newspaper, The Free Lance Star, ran a story describing its twelve-foot ceilings and six-foot-wide doors, probable blood stains and coal fire burns on the floor from civil war surgeons sterilizing instruments when the house was pressed into service as a Union hospital. The purchase and restorations by Doctor and Mrs. Maurer were done for $4.7million. The article went on to describe how many of the battle scars have been repaired by previous owners, with an exception of a shell hole in a wall and what was believed to be blood stains on the floors. The reporter stated that the Maurer's purchased the home after relocating from New York, but they did not consider themselves the owners. "We are merely temporary guardians until the next owner takes possession" , Dr. Maurer said. During the renovation, the Maurer's hid twenty-first century items in various places for future renovators to discover. Legend says the ghost of former Virginia Colonel Lieutenant Governor Spotswood still roams the house.
In November 2020, I had the pleasure of meeting and giving a tour of the local battlefields to @lelliott19, Jody and "Rambo". One of the sites we drove past was Federal Hill. That occasion and our research collaboration the next two years on Sargent Richard Kirkland inspired this post.
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Just taking a break so we can both work on other things temporarily. Thank you so much for all your help on that project - the endless researching and reviewing was bad enough.
Bringing the