They melted like snow on the ground, one officer said¿wave after wave of Federal soldiers charging uphill across an open, muddy plain. Confederates, fortified behind a stone wall along a sunken road, poured a solid hail of lead into them as they charged . . . and faltered . . . and died.¿I had never before seen fighting like that, nothing approaching it in terrible uproar and destruction,¿the officer said as he watched the slaughter. ¿It is only murder now.¿As a result of the carnage, the battle of Fredericksburg is usually remembered as the most lopsided Union defeat of the war.¿Burnside¿s folly,¿ it¿s been called¿named after the Union commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside who led the Army of Potomac to ruin along the banks of the Rappahannock River.But the battle of Fredericksburg remains one of the most misunderstood and misremembered engagements of the war. Burnside started with a well-conceived plan and had every reason to expect victory. How did it go so terribly wrong?Authors Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White have worked for years along Fredericksburg¿s Sunken Road and Stone Wall, and they¿ve taken thousands of visitors across the battlefield. In Simply Murder: The Battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, they not only recount Fredericksburg¿s tragic story of slaughter, they also share information about the battlefield itself and the insights they¿ve learned from years of walking the ground.Simply Murder can be enjoyed in the comfort of one¿s living room or used as a guide on the battlefield itself. It is part of the new Emerging Civil War Series which offers compelling, easy-to-read overviews of some of the Civil War¿s most important stories. Each volume features masterful storytelling richly enhanced with hundreds of photos, illustrations, and maps.

Chris Mackowski, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief and cofounder of Emerging Civil War (www.emergingcivilwar.com). He is historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the Spotsylvania battlefield (www.stevensonridge.com), and he has authored or edited more than two dozen books on the Civil War. Chris teaches writing at St. Bonaventure University's Jandoli School of Communication.