Battle of Fredericksburg

Overview

The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. The combat between the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Robert E. Lee included futile frontal attacks by the Union army on December 13 against entrenched Confederate lines, hurling themselves against a feature of the battlefield that came to be remembered as the 'sunken wall' on the heights overlooking the city. It is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the war, with Union casualties more than twice as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates. A visitor to the battlefield described the battle as a "butchery" to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Battle of Fredericksburg resulted in Union casualties more than twice those of the Confederates — 12,653 against 5,377 — making it one of the most lopsided engagements of the American Civil War. Burnside's Army of the Potomac, numbering over 122,000, failed to dislodge Lee's 78,513-strong Army of Northern Virginia from its entrenched positions on the heights above the city. The scale of the Union loss was striking enough that a visitor to the battlefield described it to President Abraham Lincoln as a 'butchery,' a characterization that captured the battle's place in the war's memory as a costly and unproductive offensive effort in the Eastern Theater.

Tactics

Forces & casualties

Commanders (2)