The Confederate Line

Beside the Sunken Road, part of a heavily used 19th-century road system linking Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Confederate riflemen in 1862 fired from behind a waist-high stone wall at repeated lines of Union troops advancing across open fields. To the right, on Marye's Heights, nine guns of the Washington Artillery occupied the high ground during the battle, and by depressing their muzzles Confederate artillerists could scour the plain in front while firing over the heads of the infantry in the Sunken Road. The position was described as perhaps the strongest natural position ever defended by Lee's army, and S.H. Walkup of the 48th North Carolina Infantry recalled, "Our boys fired into the dense masses without the fear of missing and with a fair prospect of cutting down 2 at a time...."

Fredericksburg, Virginia · United States