Cecily Zander

So the Battle of Fredericksburg is infamous in the American Civil War.

Fredericksburg, an interesting sort of town on the Rappahannock River in Virginia.

Very quickly, from the bottom of the river, the town sort of scales these heights, hills around the town.

Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia occupy the heights in and around Fredericksburg.

They occupy most of the town.

Ambrose Burnside has planned a rare winter campaign.

This is a battle that happens in December that's very rare for the American Civil War.

He needs to get his men across the river.

The idea is to attack Lee, dislodge him from Fredericksburg off of these heights.

The most famous ridge is called Marie's Heights.

It's spelled M-A-R-Y-E-S because of course.

And so Burnside fails to get the pontoon bridges he needs to cross the river.

His attack is delayed.

When he finally gets them, he kind of rushes his men into battle because he's so excited he finally gets to kind of

carry out this campaign that he has planned and the first wave of men cross the river they begin to scale the heights and they're just mowed down because of course the confederates have the capacity sitting atop these heights to absolutely kind of destroy the union ranks and when this first attack fails burnside says we'll just send another wave

And that second wave experiences the same fate.

And a third wave.

And a fourth wave.

And by the end of it, Burnside is so fixated on this idea that simply sending another wave of troops, another wave of men, will dislodge the Confederates, that he ends up sort of accounting for this massive amount of casualties.

I mean, the ratio of casualties is more lopsided in this battle than in any battle in the Civil War.