One week after taking command of the Army of the Potomac on 7 November 1862, Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside executed a forty-mile, cross-country march from his camps near Warrenton, Virginia, to Stafford Heights opposite Fredericksburg, Virginia. Burnside's rapid maneuver placed Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia at a decided disadvantage, for Burnside's 120,000-man army threatened to position itself between Lee's 78,000-man army and Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital.
Before moving south on Richmond, Burnside would first have to cross the Rappahannock River, but owing to delays and miscommunication, the pontoon bridge equipment that was supposed to be waiting for him at Stafford Heights on 17 November did not arrive until the twenty-fifth. By then, Lee's army was occupying a range of hills across the river a short distance beyond Fredericksburg. Nevertheless, after several days of anxious deliberation, Burnside decided to cross the Rappahannock near the town and at a point about a mile downstream. Early on the morning of 11 December, Federal engineers began assembling the bridges and completed the lower spans later that day. But heavy rifle-musket fire emanating from Fredericksburg forced the engineers to scurry for cover with the upper bridges just half-finished.
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