Burnside found Lee strongly posted on Marye's Heights, which rise sharply behind the little town of Fredericksburg on the southern bank of the Rappahannock River. Burnside attacked in front. His soldiers had to cross the river and assault the hill in face of a murderous fire-and in vain. He lost thirteen thousand men to only four thousand of the Confederates. "Fighting Joe" Hooker now succeeded Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac. We must now turn to the West, and see what had been doing there in 1861-1862.

In Illinois there appeared a trained soldier of fierce energy and invincible will, Ulysses Simpson Grant. He had been educated at West Point and had served in the Mexican War. In September, 1861, he seized Cairo at the junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi. In January, 1862, General George H. Thomas defeated a Confederate force at Mill Springs, in the upper valley of the Cumberland River. In this way Grant and Thomas secured the line of the Ohio and eastern Kentucky for the Union. THE BRIDGE AT ANTIETAM. Burnside's soldiers charged over the bridge from the middle foreground.