On December 13, 1862, during the U.S. Civil War, the Union Army suffered its most calamitous, and tragic defeat to date at the hands of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on the frozen fields south of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
After taking over for the paradoxically arrogant yet timid Maj. Gen. George McClellan following the blood-letting at Antietam in September, the new Union Army commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside was tasked by President Lincoln to vigorously pursue and destroy CSA Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army now encamped in the Shenandoah Valley in that state. Despite harboring doubts about his own abilities as an army commander, the affable and dapper Burnside concocted a plan to dash due south and lay a pontoon bridge over the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg. His aim was to get ahead of Lee’s army farther to the west and race for Richmond, the Southern…
