Editing Ambrose Burnside (section)

===Fredericksburg===
{{Main|Battle of Fredericksburg}}
[[File:AmbroseBurnsideonMount1862.jpg|thumb|Union General Ambrose Burnside, 1862]]

After McClellan failed to pursue General [[Robert E. Lee]]'s retreat from [[Antietam]], Lincoln ordered McClellan's removal on November 5, 1862, and selected Burnside to replace him on November 7, 1862. Burnside reluctantly obeyed this order, the third such in his brief career, in part because the courier told him that, if he refused it, the command would go instead to Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, whom Burnside 
disliked. Burnside assumed charge of the Army of the Potomac in a change of command ceremony at the farm of Julia Claggett in [[New Baltimore, Virginia]].<ref name=claggett>{{cite web |author1=Department of the Treasury. Office of the First Comptroller |title=Approved Claim Files from Prince William County, Virginia: Claggett, Julia F, Claim No. 41668 |url=https://catalog.archives.gov/id/59886439 |website=Library of Congress |publisher=Southern Claims Commission |access-date=March 9, 2021 |page=35 |date=September 5, 1876 |archive-date=April 15, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210415050406/https://catalog.archives.gov/id/59886439 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>Sears, ''Young Napoleon'', pp. 238–41</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=George McClellan - Biography, Civil War & Importance |url=https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/george-b-mcclellan |website=History.com |date=June 10, 2019 |access-date=25 April 2023 |language=en}}</ref> McClellan visited troops to bid them farewell. Columbia Claggett, Julia Claggett's daughter-in-law, testified after the war that a "parade and transfer of the Army to Gen. Burnside took place on our farm in front of our house in a change of command ceremony at New Baltimore, Virginia on November 9, 1862."<ref name=commish>{{cite web |author1=Department of the Treasury. Office of the First Comptroller |title=Approved Claim Files from Prince William County, Virginia: Claggett, Julia F, Claim No. 41668 |url=https://catalog.archives.gov/id/59886439 |website=Library of Congress |publisher=Southern Claims Commission |access-date=March 9, 2021 |page=35 |date=September 5, 1876 |archive-date=April 15, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210415050406/https://catalog.archives.gov/id/59886439 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name=claggett/>

President Abraham Lincoln pressured Burnside to take aggressive action and approved his plan on November 14 to capture the Confederate capital at [[Richmond, Virginia]]. This plan led to a humiliating and costly Union defeat at the [[Battle of Fredericksburg]] on December 13. His advance upon Fredericksburg was rapid, but the attack was delayed when the engineers were slow to marshal pontoon bridges for crossing the [[Rappahannock River]], as well as his own reluctance to deploy portions of his army across fording points. This allowed Gen. Lee to concentrate along Marye's Heights just west of town and easily repulse the Union attacks.

Assaults south of town were also mismanaged, which were supposed to be the main avenue of attack, and initial Union breakthroughs went unsupported. Burnside was upset by the failure of his plan and by the enormous casualties of his repeated, futile frontal assaults, and declared that he would personally lead an assault by the IX corps. His corps commanders talked him out of it, but relations were strained between the general and his subordinates. Accepting full blame, he offered to retire from the U.S. Army, but this was refused. Burnside's detractors labeled him the "Butcher of Fredericksburg".<ref>William Palmer Hopkins, ''The Seventh Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers in the Civil War 1862–1865''. Providence, RI: The Providence Press, 1903, p. 56.</ref>

In January 1863, Burnside launched a second offensive against Lee, but it bogged down in winter rains before anything was accomplished, and has derisively been called the [[Mud March (American Civil War)|Mud March]]. In its wake, he asked that several openly insubordinate officers be relieved of duty and [[court-martial]]ed; he also offered to resign. Lincoln quickly accepted the latter option, and on January 26 replaced Burnside with Maj. Gen. [[Joseph Hooker]], one of the officers who had conspired against him.<ref name=WWS>Wilson, np.; Warner, p. 58; Sauers, p. 328.</ref>