A few days before Mike Hubbert died, division commander Gen. Lafayette McLaws went down from his headquarters near Marye’s Heights to see Barksdale’s Mississippi Brigade in the city.

“I visited Fredricksburg this evening,” McLaws wrote his wife, Emily, on April 13, 1863, “and found the command there all in good spirits. The men playing ball, the band playing. Some fishing and all as unconcerned about the enemy as if there was no war, no enemy within a thousand miles, and yet the Yankees are visible on the other side [of the Rappahannock River], parading and drilling, and moving about in large masses.”