Battle
After being defeated at the Battle of Second Manassas (called Second Battle of Bull Run by the Union), the Federal army retreated to positions near Centreville, Virginia. Confederate general Robert E. Lee, in an attempt to surround the Union army and block its retreat towards Washington, D.C., sent 20,000 men under Stonewall Jackson north and then east along the Little River Turnpike (today part of Route 50) to get behind the Union position. Union General John Pope learned of this action, and sent about 6,000 men to intercept.
The two sides came into contact during the afternoon of September 1, 1862. The Confederate forces were on Ox Hill, alongside the Little River Turnpike, and the Union forces came from the south. A severe thunderstorm raged as each side attacked and counterattacked, and Union generals Stevens and Kearny were killed during the fighting. During a charge by the 79th New York Highlanders, later called the Cameron Highlanders, against Confederates massed in the woods, Stevens picked up the regiment's fallen colors and shouted, "Highlanders, my Highlanders, follow your general!" Within seconds, a Confederate bullet struck his head and he died instantly. After receiving a message from Gen. David B. Birney that there was a gap in the Union line, Kearny rode through a cornfield to reconnoiter. This brought him face to face with a line of Rebels, who shouted, "That's a Yankee officer! Shoot him!" Kearny ignored an order to halt and musket volley from the 49th Georgia regiment brought him down. By nightfall, neither side had broken through, and both fell back. The Union suffered approximately 1,300 casualties, with the Confederacy losing about 800.
The bulk of the Union army was able to retreat further east towards Washington, ending Lee's attempt to fully defeat the Union army and thus protecting the capital from attack, but it came at a cost of many casualties and two important generals lost. Lee instead turned to Maryland, and fought the Battle of Antietam sixteen days later.
Read more about this topic: Ox Hill Battlefield Park
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“Above the bayonets, mixed and crossed,
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost
Receding through the battle cloud,
And heard across the tempest loud
The death cry of a nation lost!”
—Will Henry Thompson (1848–1918)
“Oh, who will now be able to relate how Pantagruel behaved in face of these three hundred giants! Oh my muse, my Calliope, my Thalie, inspire me now, restore my spirits, because here is the ass’s bridge of logic, here is the pitfall, here is the difficulty of being able to describe the horrible battle undertaken.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“The Battle of Waterloo is a work of art with tension and drama with its unceasing change from hope to fear and back again, change which suddenly dissolves into a moment of extreme catastrophe, a model tragedy because the fate of Europe was determined within this individual fate.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)