American Civil War: At the Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee repulses attacks by Union Major General Ambrose Burnside on Marye's Heights, inflicting heavy casualties.

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 to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.