The Bristoe campaign was a series of minor battles fought in Virginia during October and November 1863, in the American Civil War. Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, began to maneuver in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Lee countered with a turning movement, which caused Meade to withdraw his army back toward Centreville. Lee struck at Bristoe Station on October 14, but suffered losses in two brigades and withdrew. As Meade followed south once again, the Union army smashed a Confederate defensive bridgehead at Rappahannock Station on November 7 and drove Lee back across the Rapidan River. Along with the infantry battles, the cavalry forces of the armies fought at Auburn on October 13, again at Auburn on October 14, and at Buckland Mills on October 19.
The Confederates had not achieved their primary objectives of bringing on a decisive battle or preventing the Federal reinforcement of the Western Theater, and Lee and his officers were much demoralized by this failure.
After the Battle of Gettysburg in July, Robert E. Lee retreated back across the Potomac River to Virginia and concentrated behind the Rapidan River in Orange County, Virginia. Meade was widely criticized for failing to pursue aggressively and defeat Lee's army. He planned new offensives in Virginia for the fall.
Early in September, Lee dispatched two divisions of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's Corps to reinforce the Confederate Army of Tennessee for the Battle of Chickamauga. Meade knew that Lee had been weakened by the departure of Longstreet and wanted to take advantage. Meade advanced his army to the Rappahannock River in August, and on September 13 he pushed strong columns forward to confront Lee along the Rapidan, occupying Culpeper, Virginia, following the Battle of Culpeper Court House. Meade planned to use his numerical superiority in a broad turning movement, similar to the one planned by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker in the Battle of Chancellorsville that spring. However, on September 24 the Union had to deplete its forces as well, sending the XI and XII Corps to the Chattanooga campaign in Tennessee.
Lee learned of the departing Union corps, and early in October he began an offensive sweep around Cedar Mountain with his remaining two corps, attempting to turn Meade's right flank. Meade, despite having superior numbers, did not wish to give battle in a position that did not offer him the advantage and ordered the Army of the Potomac to withdraw along the line of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad.
On October 13, Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart was on one of his typical cavalry raids to capture supply wagons and blundered into the rear guard of the Union III Corps near Warrenton. Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell's corps was sent to rescue him, but Stuart hid his troopers in a wooded ravine until the unsuspecting III Corps moved on, and the assistance was not necessary.
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.
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