The part which Fredericksburg played in the civil war is so well known, that we will be content with a brief reference. As soon as the Confederate capitol was removed to Richmond, it became at once, and continued during the entire war, the objective point of the Federal invasion of the South. It was apparent, therefore, from an inspection of the map, that Fredericksburg would necessarily witness a bloody act in that direful drama; for she was situated half-way on the direct route between Washington and Richmond. If ever anywhere grim-visaged war showed his horrid front, it was at this foredoomed, devoted town. She was the immediate theatre of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, on December 13, 1862. In the cannonade that ushered in that battle, a hundred and eighty guns, some of them seige pieces, carrying seventy pound projectiles, for ten mortal hours poured a pitiless storm of shot and shell upon the helpless town. No such cannonade, save that which preceded Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, was ever heard upon this continent; nay, ever heard upon this earth. Four and a half months after that bloody baptism, the town witnessed the desperate, but unsuccessful, endeavor of Gen Sedgwick to march his corps of thirty thousand men to the relief of Hooker, at Chancellorsville; and she was the hospital for fifteen thousand wounded men from Grant's army in the Wilderness campaign of May, 1864. If lines be drawn from Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville; from Chancellorsville to the Wilderness battlefields; from the Wilderness battlefield to the Bloody Angle, near Spotsylvania Court-House; and from there to the starting point at Fredericksburg, these lines will include a space that is smaller in area than the District of Columbia. On this area more blood was shed, and more men killed, than upon any area of equal dimensions, in the world. Early in December, 1862, Burnside, urged by the clamor of the Northern press and populace, resolved to cross the Rappahannock, and despite the near approach of winter to assume the offensive. At this time the attempt of Federal gun boats to pass up the river to Fredericksburg had been frustrated by Stuart and some field batteries. On December 13, 1862, Burnside started to cross the Rappahannock. Never did a general or army await the attack of a more numerous enemy with greater confidence than did Lee and the Confederates at Fredericksburg. [Illustration: BROMPTON (THE OLD MARYE MANSION) Now the Residence of Capt. M. B. Rowe.] When the two pre-arranged signal guns announced that the shelling of the town was about to begin, long streams of carriages and wagons, bearing fugitive women and children, and long processions on foot of those who could not procure vehicles, all seeking temporary shelter in the woods and wilderness, passed the camp fires of the Confederate soldiers in the rear of the town.