"...general consensus that John Lejeune was one of the Confederacy's more capable generals, though his contemporaries were of the mind that this was because the "Hero of the Occoquan" had more daring and grit, whereas modern scholarship reflects more on his fairly clear-eyed assessment of logistics, when to hold and when to counter, and his refusal to countenance war crimes committed by his men. For close to nine months he directed a tight, disciplined defense between the hills and rivers of north-central Virginia, of which Fredericksburg was its first line of defense and where he made his name; despite rapidly deteriorating conditions for the Confederate cause, his doggedness and talent kept the Eastern Front from turning into the kind of slow-grinding war of annihilation experienced in West Tennessee, northern and central Alabama, Georgia and parts of South Carolina during the last year of the war.
But John Lejeune had not been appointed to merely hold the Yankees at bay; he had been given his job over the spent and unimaginative force of Alexander Dade to drive the Yankee back across the Potomac. After the Warrenton Offensive, however, Lejeune quickly deduced that this was simply not going to happen. The chance for that had come at the Occoquan and narrowly been denied him, and though perhaps had a better result at the Bull Run River allowed a Confederate division or two to snake up towards Fort Arlington, it could have been different, that was not how it had gone. The Yankees had retrenched after the Occoquan, solidified their crossing points, and then made clever use of counterattacks and superior airpower with a level of coordination that was denied Lejeune as the Confederate Army Air Corps was indulged by Richmond in their refusal to be brought under his direct command.
What Lejeune did realize, however, was that the Yankees could be kept north of the Rappahannock, thanks in large part to excellent sight-lines from the hills around Fredericksburg, and upon Lenihan's attack there in late September and early October, Lejeune doled out a defeat that was similar to the early campaigns of the war in its disproportionality. Artillery and air attacks rained down on Yankees trying to get across the river, and the unique topography of Fredericksburg allowed the Confederates every advantage in the defense. It helped that Lejeune was not trying to attack very far back across the river himself, and so when his forces were able to clear Yankee trenches it forced Lenihan to pull back.
There would be no repeat of the heroics of the Occoquan, however. Lejeune's attempt at a quick counteroffensive towards Warrenton were stopped within days in mid-October, thanks as always to landships deployed in defense, longer-range artillery that could start bombarding Confederate positions well in advance of them being in range of Yankee trenches, and continued aerial cover from across the river in Maryland. Lejeune halted his forces and elected to regroup, figuring that there would be another offensive from Lenihan within weeks, and indeed in late November when the Yankees attacked again at Second Fredericksburg, they received a similar bloody nose.
Lejeune's success at Fredericksburg was well-timed; the powerful Virginia Senator Thomas Martin's newly-formed National Alliance for Victory was headed to the polls in early November, so a major victory in Martin's home state to recompense for less exciting news out of Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas was seen as a must. As such, Lejeune acquitted himself well. However, the battles of Fredericksburg in the end did little to alleviate the mounting logistic problems facing the Confederacy, especially as simultaneous to his fight at the Rappahannock, an American force under General Herman Hall had punched its way down the Shenandoah Valley, seizing Harrisonburg just as Lenihan's men were in retreat and by the end of the month besieging Staunton, which would fall shortly after the elections. The crucial harvest out of the Shenandoah was thus largely unavailable to Lejeune's tired, hungry men, and the fragility of Confederate defenses, to say nothing of their ability to mount the kind of counterattack that could actually dislodge the enemy, was laid bare once more..."
- Making Sense of the Senseless: The Great American War at 100
(Kept things kind of high-level here, and will likely continue to do so/accelerate that process, as I'm reaching the point where I'm tired of writing the GAW - its been nearly a year! - and want to wrap it up.)