Following his defeat in the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, Burnside was desperate to restore his reputation and the morale of his Army of the Potomac. The day after Christmas, he began making preparations for a new offensive. This would involve feints at the fords upstream of Fredericksburg to distract the Confederates while he took the bulk of the army across the Rappahanock seven miles south of town. Finally, he planned for a cavalry operation on a grand scale, something that had never been done so far in the Eastern Theater, where Union horsemen had performed poorly and suffered repeated embarrassments at the hands of their Confederate foes. Burnside detailed 1500 troopers for this planned operation. 500 of them would create a distracting feint in the Warrenton-Cu