American Civil War: The Battle of Fredericksburg ends in a Union defeat as General Ambrose Burnside withdraws the Army of the Potomac across the Rappahannock River.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union. The central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.

The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. The combat between the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Robert E. Lee included futile frontal attacks by the Union army on December 13 against entrenched Confederate against a feature of the battlefield that came to be remembered as the 'sunken wall' on the heights overlooking the city. It is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the war, with Union casualties more than twice as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates. A visitor to the battlefield described the battle as a "butchery" to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

The Union was the central government of the United States during the American Civil War. Its civilian and military forces resisted the Confederacy's attempt to secede following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States. Lincoln's administration asserted the permanency of the federal government and the continuity of the United States Constitution.

Ambrose Everts Burnside was an American army officer and politician who became a senior Union general in the American Civil War and a three-time Governor of Rhode Island, as well as being a successful inventor and industrialist.