The Battle of Fredericksburg was, perhaps, the saddest, most lopsided defeat for the Union Army during the war.
Union casualties outnumbered Confederate casualties by more than two to one.
In December 1862, the Union’s Army of the Potomac had grown to 135,000 men, according to historian Francis Augustin O’Reilly.
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was 78,000 strong.
The Union Army, whose beloved commander, Gen. George B. McClellan, had just been fired for incompetence, was in turmoil.
McClellan’s replacement, Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, was unknown and untested.
“I anticipate only disaster,” the New York diarist George Templeton Strong wrote of the situation.
The battle played out over three days, Dec. 11, 12 and 13, in cold, fog and mud — and a haunting display of the aurora borealis at night.
The Union Army’s crossing of the river was the first bridgehead landing under enemy fire in American history, according to O’Reilly.
The street fighting was the first ever on the North American continent. And the town, which was pillaged by the Yankees, became the first American city sacked since Washington in the War of 1812.
Finally, in a ghastly scene, the Union Army led a series of futile charges against Confederate positions at a place called Marye’s Heights on Dec. 13.
Men fell like leaves, observers said. One officer, quoted by O’Reilly, said his men went down like bowling pins. Another Union officer lost 1,000 of his men in 45 minutes.
Union soldiers pinned down by rebels firing from behind a stone wall on Marye’s Heights made barricades out of the bodies of slain comrades.
A Union general ordered his men to attack with unloaded muskets so they would not be tempted to pause and fire during their charge. (This fall, during a dig in the town, archaeologists unearthed a pile of bullets that looked like they had been unloaded from muskets.)
Two days later, the Yankees withdrew in defeat across the river. An estimated 12,600 were killed, wounded or missing, according the National Park Service.
A rebel general told his men, “There is not a live Yankee this side of the river.”
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