(AotP2) Glory Road by Bruce Catton

Author:Bruce Catton [Catton, Bruce]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-07-19T03:00:00+00:00

Pleasonton got his men down to the upper fords of the Rappahannock all unnoticed, and in the mist of an early dawn on June 9 he sent them down to the river to cross with a whoop and a wild splashing gallop. They promptly crumpled up the Confederate outpost line and went careening up from the riverside toward the open fields and knolls around Brandy Station, where Stuart had just been reviewing his own cavalry.

What followed was the biggest cavalry fight of the war—a wild, confused action in which cavalry charged cavalry with sabers swinging, dust clouds rising so thickly that it was hard to tell friend from enemy, and the rule was to cut hard at the nearest face and ride on fast. For once in his life Stuart was taken by surprise. A vicious fire fight developed in the meadows near a little country church, where dismounted troopers of the 8th Illinois Cavalry fired their carbines so fast that some of the weapons burst, and a flanking column went thundering up a side road and came within an inch of capturing Fleetwood Hill, where Stuart had his headquarters tents. In the final nick of time Stuart got his squadrons back, and there were charge and countercharge all up and down the Fleetwood slopes, Confederate troopers riding through a battery of Yankee horse artillery and cutting down the gunners, and the air was full of dust and the thunder of pounding hoofs and the clang of steel and the sickening sound of head-long columns crashing bodily into one another.

By the narrowest margin Stuart's men held the hill. One of Pleasonton's columns went astray somehow and did not get into action, and scouts notified Pleasonton that gray infantry was showing itself around Brandy Station, which made him feel that there might be such a thing as going too far. In the end, the Yankee cavalry rode back to the river and went back where it came from, the corps as a whole having left approximately ten per cent of its members behind as casualties. Among these, shot dead from his saddle in the first yelling charge up from the riverbank, was Mississippi-born Grimes Davis, who had shown a great knack for making rowdy volunteers take regular-army discipline and like it, and who had begun to look like one of the army's most promising cavalry officers.

This fight was not without effect. The Federal cavalry had finally been beaten and had had to withdraw, but it had at last stood up to the rebel cavalry in open combat, and the men were immensely pleased with themselves. A Confederate critic remarked ruefully of this battle that "it made the Federal cavalry," and a New York private said gleefully that "the rebels were going to have a review of their cavalry on that day, but our boys reviewed them." This soldier could not understand why the Yankee troopers had been withdrawn after what he considered a winning fight, but he concluded hopefully that "the head officers knew all about it.

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