Sound and Fury

Ulric Dahlgren led a Union cavalry raid on the town of Fredericksburg Virginia on the cold Sunday morning of November 9 1862. Only about 3 hours long the incident is a minor footnote in Civil War history. Yet this story is a microcosm of the war as experienced by the citizens newspapers North and South the individual soldier and his officers. First person accounts paint a detailed picture of the events of that morning eschewing the spin of triumph or perfidy so common to military narratives.