The Battle of Brandy Station, also called the Battle of Fleetwood Hill, was the largest predominantly cavalry engagement of the American Civil War, as well as the largest to take place ever on American soil. It was fought at the beginning of the Gettysburg Campaign by the Union cavalry under Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton against Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry on June 9, 1863.
Pleasonton launched a surprise dawn attack on Stuart's cavalry at Brandy Station, Virginia. After an all-day fight in which fortunes changed repeatedly, the Federals retired without discovering Gen. Robert E. Lee's infantry camped near Culpeper. This battle marked the end of the Confederate cavalry's lopsided dominance in the East. From this point in the war, the Federal cavalry gained strength and confidence.
Read more about Battle Of Brandy Station: Background, Opposing Forces and Pleasonton's Plan, Battle, Aftermath, Preservation Efforts
Famous quotes containing the words battle of, battle, brandy and/or station:
“Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Like an old brandy after a long rain,
Distinguished, and familiar, and aloof.”
—James Vincent Cunningham (1911–1985)
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)