Battle of Fredericksburg • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • Armies
The Thomas R.R. Cobb wayside marker is in the Sunken Road, at Stop One on the Battlefield Auto Tour. The marker is just a few feet from the monument to General Cobb, which marks the spot where the Confederate general was mortally wounded.
The wayside marker looks over the small monument to General Cobb on the other side of the Sunken Road.
Text from the marker:
Thomas R.R. Cobb
The monument across the road marks the spot where General Thomas R. R. Cobb suffered a mortal wound. A brilliant Constitutional lawyer prior to the war, he left his practice to take up arms for the South. At Fredericksburg Cobb fought his first battle as a brigadier general in command of a Georgia brigade. He was determined to do well. When told before the battle that he must fall back if the troops on his left gave way, Cobb growled, “Well! If they wait for me to fall back, they will wait a long time.”
Cobb fell when a Union artillery shell crashed through the Stephens house, behind you, and exploded, sending shrapnel into his thigh. He would die a few hours later. Although Cobb was a Georgian, his mother had grown up in Fredericksburg. Her childhood home, “Federal Hill,” stood on the outskirts of town within sight of Cobb’s position (trees and postwar houses obscure the view today). Later accounts claimed that the shot that killed Cobb was fired from the vicinity of his mother’s house.
Text from the caption on the upper right to the background photo:
Cobb served briefly as a delegate to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States before drawing his sword for the South. This 1862 photograph shows him as the colonel of Cobb’s Legion.
Text from the caption to the photo on the lower left:
Erected in the 1880s, this stone to General Cobb is one of the earliest monuments in the park. This photograph was taken about 20 years after the monument was erected.
Location of the monument
The marker is on the east side of the Sunken Road Trail about 220 yards north of the Visitor Center. It is directly across the Sunken Lane from the Cobb monument. (38°17’43.3″N 77°28’05.9″W)