A small country church still meets at the spot where Southern forces on an early Sunday morning attacked U.S. Grant's army, which was camped around the church building. (When my family and I worshiped there on a warm day a few years back, we used small hand fans with the traditional placement of a funeral home name on one side, but this pertinent statement on the other: "Moonshine kills.")
The commanding general of the Southern forces, Albert Sydney Johnston, was one of the 25,000 or so casualties. He had sent away his staff physician to attend a group of Federal wounded, and he bled to death when a bullet severed his femoral artery and no one around him thought to tie a tourniquet. ("These men were our enemies a moment ago," Johnston had told his doctor, who had not wanted to leave. "They are our prisoners now. Take care of them.")
5. Fredericksburg (December 1862)
Union Gen. Burnside (from whose name comes the word "sideburns") ordered his men to attack uphill against the mass fire of artillery and Confederate riflemen protected by a stone wall; thousands were killed or wounded, and not one reached the wall.
Burnside was so distraught by what he had done that he wanted to lead a new assault personally the next morning, but others dissuaded him, and the two sides remained in a standoff for two days, while Union soldiers froze to death on the few acres between the armies.
Then Burnside withdrew, but the memory of disaster was so indelibly inscribed in the minds of Union soldiers that, as Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg half a year later was proving equally dismal for the South, some Northerners were yelling: "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!"