Ball's Bluff

Fought on October 21, 1861 in Loudoun County, Virginia, Ball's Bluff stands among the war's earliest engagements, known too by the names Leesburg and Harrison's Island. It ended badly for the Union side, whose troops fell under the overall command of Major General George B. McClellan and suffered a defeat that proved deeply embarrassing.

What began the affair was nothing more ambitious than a small scouting mission across the Potomac, meant simply to learn whether Confederate forces held the valuable ground around Leesburg. Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone, acting on word that an enemy camp sat there undefended, a claim that turned out to be false, sent men across on a raid that soon brought them into contact with the enemy. Colonel Edward Baker, a sitting U.S. Senator serving in the field and a close friend of the Lincoln family, moved to bring up reinforcements, yet he neglected to secure sufficient boats for ferrying troops over the river, and this oversight delayed the crossings. Baker lost his life in the fighting, and a Confederate unit that had just arrived on the scene broke apart what remained of Stone's force.

Though the casualties Union forces sustained were minor when measured against later battles, they nonetheless caused considerable alarm in Congress, prompting lawmakers to establish the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, an institution destined to fuel bitter political quarrels for years afterward.

Background

Following the First Battle of Bull Run by roughly three months, Major General George B. McClellan was assembling and strengthening the Army of the Potomac, readying it for a future push into Virginia. On October 19, 1861, he directed Brigadier General George A. McCall to move his division toward Dranesville, Virginia, a spot twelve miles southeast of Leesburg, so as to determine what lay behind recent Confederate troop shifts suggesting that Colonel Nathan "Shanks" Evans had possibly pulled out of Leesburg. Evans indeed had departed the town on October 16 and 17, though he had acted entirely on his own initiative rather than under orders. Once Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard voiced displeasure over this withdrawal, Evans marched his men back. By nightfall on October 19, his troops held defensive ground along the Alexandria-to-Winchester Turnpike, known today as State Route 7, just east of the town.

That same evening, McClellan traveled to Dranesville to meet with McCall and instructed him to bring his division back to its main encampment at Langley, Virginia, the following day. McCall, however, asked for extra time to finish mapping local roads, and because of this delay he did not begin his march to Langley until the morning of October 21, right as combat was erupting at Ball's Bluff, a site named for the Ball family who lived nearby.

While McCall busied himself with his surveying work on October 20, McClellan instructed Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone to stage what he termed "a slight demonstration," meant to gauge how the Confederates would respond. Stone accordingly shifted troops toward the river at Edwards Ferry, spread additional forces along the waterway, directed artillery fire toward suspected enemy positions, and sent close to a hundred soldiers from the 1st Minnesota briefly across to the Virginia bank just before nightfall. When none of this drew any response from

Battle

When dawn broke on October 21, Colonel Devens and his raiding force realized the error the patrol had made the night before: no Confederate camp existed at the supposed location. Rather than crossing back over the river at once, Devens positioned his men along a tree line and dispatched a rider to inform Stone of the situation and await further orders. Once Stone heard what had happened, he sent the rider back with word that an additional 350 men from the 15th Massachusetts would cross the river to join Devens. Upon their arrival, Devens was instructed to convert his raid into a reconnaissance mission aimed at Leesburg.

While this second message was still traveling back to Devens, Edward Dickinson Baker, a colonel who also served as a United States Senator, arrived at Stone's camp seeking news of that morning's happenings. Up to this point he had taken no part in the operation. Stone explained the earlier blunder regarding the phantom camp and described the fresh orders calling for reinforcements to support Devens's reconnaissance. He then directed Baker to travel to the river crossing, assess conditions there, and use his own judgment either to pull the troops already in Virginia back or to send more men across.

As Baker made his way upriver to carry out this order, he encountered Devens's messenger returning a second time, this one bearing news that Devens's force had briefly clashed with Confederate soldiers, specifically Company K of the 17th Mississippi Infantry. Baker responded by ordering every available soldier to cross the river, though he neglected first to determine how many boats were actually on hand. This oversight created a bottleneck, and as a result Union soldiers could only cross in small numbers at a slow pace, a process that dragged on for the entire day.

Meanwhile Devens, now commanding roughly 650 men, held his forward position and fought off two further skirmishes as Confederate numbers continued to swell. Other Federal units made it across the river but stopped near the bluff rather than pushing forward. Around two in the afternoon Devens finally pulled back and linked up with Baker, who himself had only completed his crossing thirty minutes earlier. The real fighting erupted close to three o'clock and raged almost without pause until shortly after nightfall.

At approximately 4:30 in the afternoon, Baker fell in battle

In culture

This clash at Ball's Bluff has surfaced repeatedly in fiction and folklore. Copperhead, the second book in Bernard Cornwell's Starbuck Chronicles series, opens with the engagement, placing the invented Faulconer Legion on the Confederate left flank; K Company, under Captain Starbuck, initiates the collapse of Union lines there.

Geraldine Brooks used the same battle as her starting point for March, the novel that earned her the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In it, Mr. March, drawn from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women as the father figure, appears as a chaplain attached to Union forces.

Legend also attached itself to this stretch of ground. Along the Maryland side of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, tales circulated of restless spirits belonging to soldiers who perished in the fighting, including men who drowned when one of the boats went down in the Potomac. Because of this, canal workers avoided spending nights in the vicinity and instead moored their boats elsewhere until morning.

Grief over the battle also produced music and verse. Henry S. Washburn composed "The Vacant Chair" in memory of Lt. John William Grout, a member of the 15th Massachusetts Infantry who died in the engagement. George Frederick Root later set the words to music, and the song found favor on both sides of the conflict thanks to its theme of loss, one that resonated regardless of allegiance.

More recently, in 2014, historian and curator David C. Ward contributed his own literary tribute, a poem simply titled Balls Bluff. Separately, Robert Hilliard's novel "In Freedom's Shadow" opens with its protagonist, an escaped slave and spy named John Scobell, observing the battle unfold as he makes his way toward freedom.