Vic Socotra

16 November 2009

The Grand Review

(Brandy Station Review, June 1863 - painting and copyright by artist Don Troiani)

Yesterday was busy, since it started out with a mild case of disorientation, as you may have heard, and then I had to get down and back to the farm at Brandy Station- cat issues, of course, and some seasonal issues to make the place a little more snug for winter quarters, and get ready to have better ventilation when distant Spring and the campaigning season comes to us once more.

Anyway, hurtling back north on that lovely day, I ducked off the main drag of Rt. 29 to take Brandy Road, which stays to the old course of highway along the railroad tracks that once belonged to the Orange and Alexandria Line, which follows the path of the original Piedmont stage route.

The O&A was the most contested piece of rail in the entire war, which shows you the dramatic technical change that was altering the face of a continent in terms of time and distance.

By 1860, passengers could go from Washington to Lynchburg in southwestern Virginia in eight hours instead of the three-days of jolting stage-coach travel.

The O&A is also the reason that Mom’s family wound up, eventually, in not only southern Ohio, but also in the railroad business.

Family lore has my triple-great grandfather working on the railroad in Alexandria after fleeing the famine in Ireland. He was digging ties and hauling steel rail, and the only place that makes logical sense at the time was on the O&A.

The railroad was chartered the year our Irish arrived, and the family’s eventual procession west to Ohio and Tennessee followed the extension of the rails through Culpeper and Orange Courthouse.

The rails reached Manassas in 1851, Culpeper Court House by 1853, and joined the Virginia Central Railroad at Gordonsville in 1854. It reached Lynchburg in 1860, and by that time the family was gone to the west, to the great confluence of the rivers that drain the sweet rain of the heartland south to the salt of the Gulf.

The railroad provided the most direct all-rail route from Washington to Richmond, and accordingly became the main highway for troops and the vast logistics infrastructure to sustain them in the field.

In moving down the O&A to the junction with the Virginia Central at Gordonsville, the Union Army would not only take the quickest land route to Richmond but also cut off communications with the Shenandoah Valley.

The ferocity of the Southern defense resulted in the Union defeats at First and Second Manassas and dozens of engagements, large and small, along the tracks of the O&A.
Just north of Culpeper, the new path of Route 29 arcs off across the farmland. The old road hugs the train tracks, and that is where I got off to follow Brandy Road.

Before Culpeper was occupied in force by the Federals, it was the home of the Army of Northern Virginia.

In the winter of 1862-63, two Confederate infantry corps were camped out around the Courthouse- Longstreet and Ewell’s- and JEB Stuart was tasked with providing a screen to the north along the fords of the Rappahannock to prevent surprise.

Ever the showman, Stuart requested a full field review of his troops by General Lee to demonstrate his renewed capability after the privations of the Maryland campaign the year before. This grand review, scheduled for June 5, included nearly 9,000 mounted troopers and 4 batteries of horse artillery.

The State Patrol Barracks is there now, smack in the middle of the field. It is adjacent to a construction lot and a row of little houses and small businesses that straggle along right into the hamlet of Brandy Station.

I slid the Bluesmobile into the lot at the Patrol so I could park the car and survey the terrain. The cruiser seemed to be right at home among the silver-and-blue trooper cars, and I let my eyes go a little unfocused, trying to conjure the landscape as it was. By all reports, it was really something:

"The grand review of June 5 was surely the proudest day of JEB Stuart's thirty years in uniform. As he led a cavalcade of resplendent staff officers to the reviewing stand, trumpeters heralded his coming and women and girls strewed his path with flowers. Before the spectators the assembled cavalry brigade stretched a mile and a half. After Stuart and his entourage galloped past the line in review, the troopers in their turn saluted the reviewing stand in columns of squadrons. In performing a second "march past," the squadrons started off at a trot, then spurred to a gallop. Drawing sabers and breaking into the Rebel yell, the troopers rush toward the horse artillery drawn up in battery. The gunners responded defiantly, firing blank charges. Amidst this tumult of cannon fire and thundering hooves, a number of ladies swooned in their escorts' arms."
—Stephen W. Sears, Gettysburg

I did not see anyone swooning this morning, though I felt a bit like it. The fog of the tailgate party the day before had not completely burned away.

I figure the day that you don’t learn something is just another day closer to the time when we know nothing at all, so here I was. The sun was warm on my skin, and I wondered if this would be the last such day of the season.

As it turned out, Lee was not able to attend the full dress demonstration due to schedule conflicts, so it was repeated in his presence on June 8. Stuart did not repeat the splendor of the Grand Review, settling for having his horsemen ride by the reviewing position in sober ranks.

Despite the more modest level of effort, some of the cavalrymen and the newspaper reporters at the scene complained that all Stuart was doing was feeding his ego and exhausting the horses. Lee ordered Stuart to cross the Rappahannock the next day and raid Union forward positions, screening the Confederate Army from observation as he prepared to move north to Pennsylvania.

Stuart moved his tired horsemen back to the area around Fleetwood Hill at Brandy Station in preparation to execute his orders, only to be surprised by Major General Pleasanton’s bold crossing of the Rappahannock at the Beverly and Kellys Fords.

The Battle of Brandy Station which followed had plenty of real spectacle. Stuart held the field when it was over, but he was roundly criticized by the press in Richmond: “If Gen. Stuart is to be the eyes and ears of the army we advise him to see more, and be seen less…” was the assessment of The Inquirer.

Thus was it ever, I suppose, with the reporters making their own history. Stuart was a proud man, and a bold one, and the sniping from the rear might have made him more reckless than ever as the Rebel Army headed north.

I wasn’t the slightest bit anxious to upset the Virginia Patrol, so as I slid out of the lot, and turned left to parallel the O&A toward Washington, I was light on the accelerator to make sure I looked just like a sober citizen.

Close Window