Robert Stiles

After a Confederate advance was stopped at Antietam Creek, Maryland, in September 1862, General Lee pulled his Confederate army back across the Potomac River and into Virginia. It was the perfect opportunity for a northern counterat-tack— but one never came. While the Southerners regrouped, Union General McClellan stood his ground. His indecisiveness angered President Lincoln, who replaced him in November with General Ambrose Burnside.

Burnside soon ordered an all-out attack on Virginia and Richmond. At the Rappahannock River town of Fredericksburg, the Confederate army dug into a steep, fortified hillside known as Marye's Heights. Burnside ordered an attack on the Heights that turned out to be a colossal, bloody failure—a tremendous waste of effort and life that reminds many Civil War historians of the futile trench warfare of World War I.

Robert Stiles, a major of artillery in the Army of Northern...