FREDERICKSBURG: Site of Upper Pontoon, looking toward town

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FREDERICKSBURG: Meade Pyramid, site of Union breakthrough

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FREDERICKSBURG: Upper Pontoon crossing for Union army

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FREDRICKSBURG: Where Union army crossed Rappahannock River

BATTLEFIELD BACKSTORY -- Hours before dawn on Dec. 11, 1862, Union engineers began the laborious and dangerous task of building a pontoon bridge across the 250-yard-wide Rappahannock River to facilitate the crossing for thousands of soldiers in the Army of the Potomac. (Pontoon bridges also were constructed downriver at the Middle Crossing and two miles southeast of Fredericksburg.) A thick fog hovered, temporarily obscuring the bridge-builders, and the temperature dipped into the 20s, Across the Rappahannock in Fredericksburg, Confederate soldiers from Florida and Mississippi kept a watchful eye. (Click on image to enlarge and click here for all posts on this blog.)

FREDERICKSBURG: A stroll down Caroline Street

BATTLEFIELD BACKSTORY: Just below the historic Sentry Box, the yellow house seen at left, thousands of Union troops crossed the Rappahannock River on pontoons on their way to fight the Battle of Fredericksburg on Dec. 11-15, 1862. This neighborhood on Caroline Street was scene of intense fighting. The Sentry Box, once owned by Brigadier General George Weeden of the Continental Army, and the two houses in the middle distance suffered damage during the fighting. (See the Then & Now images on my other Civil War blog here and here.) I shot this photo on a misty spring morning, a much quieter day than any of  those long-ago days in December 1862  Most Fredericksburg battlefield visitors head to Marye's Heights, but there's plenty of Civil War history to be seen in the streets of town, too. (Click at upper right to enlarge and click here for all posts on this blog.)