Burnside ordered fourteen charges up a hill into Confederate rifles and artillery — one of the most futile and bloody Union assaults of the entire Civil War.
In December 1862, Union General Ambrose Burnside marched 122,000 men to the Rappahannock River opposite Fredericksburg, Virginia — but his offensive was delayed for weeks waiting for pontoon bridges, giving Lee ample time to fortify every hill overlooking the town.
Lee positioned his army on the high ground behind the city, with infantry behind a stone wall at the base of Marye's Heights and artillery commanding every approach. Looking down at the ground his men would have to cross, Confederate General Longstreet told an aide: 'A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it.'
On December 13, Burnside ordered frontal assaults up Marye's Heights. Fourteen separate Union charges were launched, and every single one was repulsed. No Union soldier got closer than 50 yards to the stone wall. The ground in front of it became carpeted with Union dead and wounded.
As night fell, thousands of wounded Union soldiers lay in the frozen fields between the lines, unable to be retrieved. The Northern Lights appeared unusually vivid that night — soldiers on both sides later recalled watching the aurora shimmer over the battlefield, an almost surreal backdrop to the carnage.
Union losses totaled 12,653 against Confederate losses of roughly 5,377 — more than double. The battle's most famous witness was Confederate General Lee himself, who watched the Union columns advancing and then shattering, and reportedly said: 'It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.'
The disaster ended Burnside's command of the Army of the Potomac and plunged Northern morale to one of its lowest points of the war. Lincoln was reported to have said he was in despair — at the rate Union generals were failing, he could not see how the war would ever be won.