During the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862, Federal troops repeatedly assaulted Confederate positions behind the stone walls along the Sunken Road at Marye’s Heights, and in five hours an estimated 6,300 Union soldiers lay dead or wounded as darkness, light snow, and near-zero temperatures settled over the field. Through the night, injured men cried out for help and water. By the afternoon of December 14, Sergeant Richard R. Kirkland of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry could no longer bear the cries, secured permission from his commander to take water to the wounded, filled as many canteens as he could carry, crossed the stone wall, and ran to aid wounded Union soldiers. After shots first rang out from the Federal lines, a Union commander called for his men not to shoot, and for ninety minutes the battlefield grew quiet as both sides observed a solemn truce while the nineteen-year-old sergeant tenderly ministered to enemy wounded soldiers. Soldiers in blue and gray repeated such incidents many times throughout the Civil War.
