Stoneman's raid was a cavalry operation led by General George Stoneman during the Chancellorsville Campaign that preceded the start of the Battle of Chancellorsville in the American Civil War.
In April 1863, Major General Joseph Hooker put his army in motion to force Lee out of his Fredericksburg positions. He sent Major General George Stoneman's 10,000-strong cavalry to move between Lee and the Confederate capital, Richmond. Hooker expected Stoneman to sever Lee's line of supply by destroying the strategically vital Orange and Alexandria Railroad at the town of Gordonsville. This would, Hooker hoped, compel Lee to withdraw from Fredericksburg while cutting him off from supplies and transportation. Hooker also saw to it that John Buford was given an active field command and rode to battle in April 1863 with the Reserve Brigade, an organization that contained the majority of the Regular Army cavalry units serving in the east.
Let your watchword be fight, and let all your orders be fight, fight, fight.
At 8 a.m. on April 13, 1863, Buford's Brigade, composed of the First, Second, Fifth, and Sixth U.S. Cavalry, left camp at Falmouth, Virginia, to embark on the ambitious and daring raid. As soon as the next day, they were engaged with the enemy at Kelly's Ford; the rebels firing upon the brigade with two 10-pounder Parrotts - 13 shots in total. Lieutenant Elder's four-gun battery replied, firing 12 shots, and drove the rebel guns out of sight. According to Buford's official report, by the 15th, the brigade was at Rappahannock Bridge, ready to cross but were ordered to await further instructions. However, nature had not dealt a kind hand to the Union cavalry as torrential rain turned the roads to quagmires and the streams into raging torrents. It was not until April 29 that the Reserve Brigade was able to cross at Kelly's Ford.
Over those intervening two weeks, Buford detailed the conditions facing the cavalry;
"At 11 a.m. on the 15th, the ford was swimming..."
"The country at that hour was like a sea. The regiment reached Morrisville on the 16th, having had Marsh Run to swim..."
"...then started for Kelly's Ford; was prevented from reaching Kelly's Ford by bad roads and fog."
"From the time that the brigade struck the river at Rappahannock Bridge on the 15th, up to the crossing of the river on the 29th, it seemed as though the elements were combined against our advance; such rains and roads I had never seen. During the whole expedition the roads were in a worse condition than I could have supposed to be possible, and the command was called upon to endure much severe discomfiture."
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 Stoneman's Raid: Louisa County (1863). 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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