Bowing to pressure from Lincoln and the War Department in Washington, General Ambrose Burnside launched a series of 14 attacks by the men of the Army of the Potomac through the town and against Confederate troops entrenched behind stone walks to the west of town.
The Union army suffered more than four times the casualties of their Rebel counterparts who taunted them as they tried to charge across open fields to the top of Marye's Heights, most not making it any closer than 50 yards. Union troops had more success on the southern end of the battlefield where they almost succeeded in turning the Confederate's right flank, but the timely arrival of reinforcements under the command of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson turned them back.
Burnside considered renewing the attacks on the 14th, but his subordinates convinced him of the futility of continuing to assail the fortress-like position and so he instead negotiated a truce so that the Union casualties could be recovered on the 15th. The carnage led commanding General Robert E. Lee to comment, famously, "It is good that war is so terrible lest we grow too fond of it.
When Lee's own troops faltered in their high watermark attack against the Yankees in Pennsylvania the following summer, many of the men in blue who had fought at Fredericksburg chanted, "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" in memory of their fallen comrades.
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