A Winter Campaign Ends in Union Disaster

Faced with a populace divided over the upcoming Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln pressed Ambrose Burnside and the Union army into a rare winter campaign in hopes that military victory would heal political divisions. Robert E. Lee's Confederate army met the Union assaults from high ground on both ends of a seven-mile-long line west and south of Fredericksburg. On December 13, 1862, the open ground there became a vast killing field, and more than 1,500 Union soldiers perished, along with Lincoln's and Burnside's hopes for a decisive victory.

Fredericksburg, Virginia · United States