Blackburn's Ford was a Civil War engagement fought in Virginia, 1861. It was a Confederate victory.
On 16 July, 1862, the untried Union army under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell, 35,000 strong, marched out of the Washington defenses to give battle to the Confederate army, which was concentrated around the vital railroad junction at Manassas. The Confederate army, about 22,000 men, under the command of Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, guarded the fords of Bull Run. On July 18, McDowell reached Centreville and pushed southwest, attempting to cross at Blackburn's Ford. He was repulsed. This action was a reconnaissance-in-force prior to the main event at Manassas/Bull Run. Because of this action, Union commander McDowell decided on the flanking maneuver he employed at First Manassas.
On July 18, 1861, Confederate forces clashed with Union troops at Blackburn's Ford in Virginia, an engagement sometimes called the Skirmish at Blackburn's Ford, forming part of the Manassas campaign during the American Civil War. Irvin McDowell, commanding the Union Army of Northeastern Virginia, had been pushing his men southward toward Richmond, the Confederate capital, when his force ran into P. G. T. Beauregard's Confederate Army of the Potomac. Looking to pinpoint the left end of the Confederate line, McDowell ordered elements of Daniel Tyler's division forward to test the enemy positions posted along Bull Run Creek. When Union soldiers tried to force a crossing at the ford itself, they were driven back by Confederate gunfire, and the attack collapsed. This setback pushed McDowell to look elsewhere along the Confederate line for a place to strike, a decision that set the stage for the First Battle of Bull Run just three days afterward.
On July 16, 1861, McDowell led his inexperienced Union Army of Northeastern Virginia, numbering 35,000 men, away from the fortifications around Washington, D.C., intent on confronting the Confederate Army of the Potomac, which had gathered near the crucial rail hub at Manassas. Progress was sluggish, and the force did not arrive at Fairfax Court House until July 17. The following day, McDowell instructed Brig. Gen. Daniel Tyler, one of his division commanders, to search for a place to cross Bull Run Creek while also maintaining the appearance that the army intended to push toward Manassas.
Facing them were roughly 22,000 Confederates under Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, positioned near Bull Run Creek, with smaller detachments stationed to the north to keep watch on the approaching Federals. As McDowell's columns moved out from Washington, these forward Confederate units gradually pulled back and merged with the larger force. Beauregard anticipated an assault around Mitchell's Ford on either the 18th or the 19th, and in the meantime he repeatedly pressed for additional troops, particularly from Joseph E. Johnston's command stationed in the Shenandoah Valley.
On the eighteenth of July, Tyler's column pushed forward into Centreville, where townspeople told him the Confederates had already pulled out. Word circulated that Milledge Bonham's men in particular had fallen back toward Blackburn's Ford. From Centreville, Tyler pressed southeast, passing Mitchell's Ford before reaching Blackburn's Ford around eleven that morning. Scanning the ground south of the stream, he judged the route to Manassas Junction largely open, unaware that Brig. Gen. James Longstreet's Confederate brigade lay hidden in the timber just beyond the crossing. He directed Capt. Romeyn B. Ayres to open up with two howitzers on the visible Confederate guns, pieces belonging to the Alexandria Artillery and the Washington Artillery, though the shelling produced no noticeable result. Tyler then sent Col. Israel B. Richardson forward with part of his brigade.
Richardson pushed a detachment of the 1st Massachusetts Infantry toward the Confederate position. Because the Massachusetts men wore gray rather than the customary blue of Union forces, and the Confederates facing them were dressed similarly, confusion briefly reigned. Richardson followed this unit with the 1st Michigan, 2nd Michigan, 3rd Michigan, and 12th New York Infantry regiments. Longstreet's brigade answered the advancing Federals first through the 1st, 11th, and 17th Virginia Infantry regiments. Tyler
Because the probing attack at Blackburn's Ford ended in failure, McDowell abandoned any plan to strike straight across Bull Run Creek. Instead, he chose to push his men over the water past the Confederate left, the same tactic he would rely on when the First Battle of Bull Run unfolded on July 21. That engagement went badly for the Union army under his command, though the Confederates lacked the organization needed to press their advantage with a real pursuit. Longstreet and Early both later insisted that the fighting at Blackburn's Ford had done much to secure the triumph of the 21st, since it left their men believing in their own abilities. Two soldiers from the 12th New York earned the Medal of Honor for what they did that day at the ford.
Remains belonging to men of the 1st Massachusetts Infantry surfaced in June 1994 and were subsequently laid to rest again.
A marker placed by Virginia Civil War Trails now stands where the skirmish took place, positioned at the spot once occupied by the old crossing.
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