Vic Socotra

09 November 2009

The Field at Brand Station

OK, I know you can’t keep everything. We cant do it for our own lives, much less expect to carry other people’s stuff around.

Why is cleaning out the home of a parent or elderly relative so difficult? Better to just have someone else do it, avoid the whole confusing mess of emotion and remorse.

Brandy Station is one of those places that has not yet been cleaned out of the national attic. Not that people haven’t tried. The guy from California that wanted to put the giant industrial park, or the Formula 1 Racetrack on this very place is a case in point.

There was a time not long ago when people here just wanted to forget that the Union Army sat on their throats for a long winter encampment, and scoured the land and the people for just about everything they had.

I found a sign that explained that the Union I Corps was sitting with its left flank right on my little farm, which wasn’t there at the time, and which had changed the character of those five acres of rich Culpeper soil forever, or at least until my little structures fall down and return to the soil.

The season before the conquest it was the Confederates who ravaged the land in their winter camp, and on these fields here at Brandy Station ten thousand Rebel horsemen and their steeds devoured the harvest of the land.

The other curious thing about this battlefield is that it is part of something quite new; a war of great mobility and breathtaking scope. I told you yesterday that Fleetwood Hill was the site of at least 21 encounters during those two awful years, but the military action continued from the fords across the Rappanhannock River and into the town.

That is a an area ten miles by ten miles at least, and every bit of it had someone draw a saber on it.

This was the staging ground for Bobby Lee’s Antietam campaign in 1862, after all, and Gettysburg in 1863.

The Union commanders, for their part, tried to disrupt the plans for those adventures by harassing the Rebels, which is why I was standing in this field near the Culpeper County airport, looking down to the angle in the farm road that once was the consecrated ground of the St. James Episcopal Church.

The people who fought the developer consider the whole area to be consecrated ground now, based on the tens of thousands who marched or fought here, and the hundreds who sacrificed their lives.

The developer shrugged, not getting it. At one point in the endless series of confrontations at the County Zoning Commission he cried, plaintively, “What do you people want, anyway?”

Well, what they wanted was for other people in years to come to stand where I was standing, and imagine, without much trouble, what it would be like to see almost twenty thousand cavalrymen ride into one another, and imagine the sound of ancient muffled cannon.

I left Rt 29 at the juntion at the hamlet of Brandy Station, which was, for a shining moment, the busiest rail depot on the East Coast. It has been asleep for more than a hundred years, and the path of the old roads can still be seen in places, worn into the soil.

It was a golden afternoon on a golden weekend. I had some time to kill and an itch to see what all the more recent excitement had been about.

(Bluesmobile under Fleetwood Hill)

About 4:30 a.m. on June 9, a Union column crossed the Rappahannock River in a dense fog. They blew through a light force of Confederate pickets at Beverly's Ford, a little less than three miles from here, measured diagonally across the airport runway.

General Burnside had ordered the his cavalry to raid and harass the Stuart’ horsemen, who were encamped in the fields around Fleetwood Hill.

Trooper’s from General “Grumble” Jones brigade, awakened by the sound of nearby gunfire, rode to the scene partially dressed and often riding bareback. All of Stuart's command was startled to be hit out of the blue, so to speak, and was outnumbered by the division of his West Point classmate, Brig. Gen. John Buford.

(Bluesmobile in middle distance at Buford’s advance, Fleetwood Hill in the distance. Davis advanced to the left foreground.)

As you might imagine, Grumble had a nasty disposition, and he directed his cannoneers swung one or two guns into position and fired down the road at Buford's men, enabling the other pieces to escape and establish the foundation for the subsequent Confederate line. The artillery unlimbered on two knolls on either side of the Beverly's Ford Road. Most of Jones's command rallied to the left of this Confederate artillery line, while Hampton's brigade formed to the right.

The 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry unsuccessfully charged the guns at St. James Church, suffering the greatest casualties of any regiment in the battle. Several Confederates later commented that the Union charge as the most "brilliant and glorious" of the war.

Which is to stay that after a good go, and reaching the Rebel Guns, they were pushed back, but did so in good order. Jones troops held their own and ended the fight with more horses and more and better small-arms than at the beginning, capturing two regimental colors, an artillery battery, and about 250 prisoners.

This field was a turning point in several important ways. The Confederates, brilliant horsemen, were being ground down by the inexorable weight of the Union Army, which applied the traditional principle of mass and standardized training to produce additional, competition forces in an endless stream.

Stuart had some reason to be satisfied with what had happened on this field, but was alarmed to hear gunfire to his rear, in the direction of Fleetwod. Another Union force had crossed the river at Kellys Ford to the south, and was streaming toward the Brandy Station.

There was a mad dash to occupy the high ground, and horsemen swept back and forth across it the rest of the day.

(The House at Fleetwood Hill)

There is an old monument at the summit that describes the desperate action on the top of the hill. You would have to look carefully, since the railing on the stairs is long gone, and there is no place to park on the narrow farm lane.

Looking over the top of the monument to the fulcrum of the battle, well, shit. Who would have done such a thing? Who would be so presumptuous as to claim as their own the ground where so many died ?

I don’t know. But I guess I am satisfied that as much has been saved as it it. It allows you to contemplate the fact that J.E.B. Stuart was surprised here twice; not a good omen, and his failure to stay in touch with Lee’s Army in the hostile fields of Pennsylvania in just a few months would rob the Army of Northern Virginia of it’s eye and ears. And maybe rob Lee of the pivotal victory that could have brought Britain into the war on the side of the South.

Neither Grumble Jones, nor J.E.B. Stuart lived to the end of the war.

What a waste. I dunno. I think the guy who built the house ought to be horsewhipped. But it sure was a nice day to be out walking around.

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