Battle of Fredericksburg

In December 1862 General Ambrose Burnside tried to cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg and move on Richmond before Lee could block him. Delays with the pontoon bridges gave Lee time to concentrate his army on the hills behind the town. On 13 December the Union infantry advanced across open ground against Marye's Heights, where Confederate infantry stood behind a stone wall and sunken road with artillery above them. Wave after wave was cut down, and no attacker reached the wall. Burnside withdrew across the river on the night of 15 December, and the loss was among the most one-sided of the war.

Fredericksburg is remembered as a command failure, and it cost Burnside his post within weeks; he was replaced by Joseph Hooker in January 1863. Historians stress that the pontoons were late because of misunderstood orders, and that the plan failed before any shots were fired at the wall. The town itself suffered shelling and looting, and it was one of the war's first large urban fights. The Lee quotation is known from postwar accounts, not from a contemporary record.