The Battle of Buckland Mills, also known as The Buckland Races or Chestnut Hill, was fought on October 19, 1863, between Union and Confederate forces in the American Civil War. Union cavalry led by Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick were caught in a Confederate ambush and defeated.
Near Buckland Mills, on Broad Run, Confederate cavalry commander Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, with Maj. Gen. Wade Hampton's cavalry division, were covering Gen. Robert E. Lee's retirement from his defeat at Bristoe to the Rappahannock River. On October 19, they turned on Kilpatrick's pursuing Federal cavalry, while Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee's division charged the Federal flank. Kilpatrick was routed, fleeing five miles to Haymarket and Gainesville. The Confederates derisively called the affair "The Buckland Races", although some Confederate commanders likened it to a fox hunt. The Condeferate forces incurred 41 casualties. The Union forces lost about 261 men, most of which were taken prisoner.
The Civil War Trust (a division of the American Battlefield Trust) and its partners have acquired and preserved 91 acres (0.37 km2) of the battlefield.
Adams, James Truslow, Dictionary of American History, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940.
CWSAC Report Update and Resurvey: Individual Battlefield Profiles
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
This page covers Battle of Buckland Mills — Preliminary Action at Gainesville. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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