A Strong Calvary at The Brandy Station Battlefield

The today’s landscape of the Civil War’s Brandy Station Battlefield.

American Battlefield Trust

Recipient: Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation

Amount: $2,440,495.00
Acres: 97.19

A month after the Union Army of the Potomac’s defeat at Chancellorsville in the Spring of 1863, its commanders received troubling reports of a massive concentration of Confederate cavalry near Culpepper, Virginia. Believing the Confederates were preparing a large-scale raid, or worse, the vanguard of an invasion into Union territory, the Army of the Potomac was ordered to go on the offensive by Major General Joseph Hooker.

Crossing the Rappahannock River early in the morning of June 9, Union cavalry commanded by Brigadier General Alfred Pleasonton attacked toward Brandy Station in two wings, attempting to flank (attack from the side) and surround the Confederates. In over fourteen hours of sustained combat at Saint James Church, Fleetwood Hill, and Yew Ridge, nearly 21,000 soldiers clashed in the largest cavalry battle in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

Enduring a narrow defeat and forced to withdraw, the Union force did not succeed in their mission to stop the Confederate advance. However, for the Union cavalry, the confidence and experience they gained at Brandy Station would prove invaluable four weeks later at a battlefield in southern Pennsylvania called Gettysburg.

This 2023 Battlefield Land Acquisition Grant awarded by the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program supports the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s effort to preserve Brady Station as a unit of their Culpeper Battlefields State Park. The acreage protected by this grant includes sections of the Confederate withdrawal from Saint James Church to Fleetwood Hill.

Battlefield Land Acquisition Grants from the NPS American Battlefield Protection Program empower preservation partners nationwide to acquire and preserve threatened Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War battlefields. In addition, the program administers three other grants: Preservation Planning Grants, which are open to all sites of armed conflict on American soil, the newly authorized Battlefield Restoration and Battlefield Interpretation Grant programs. This financial assistance generates community-driven stewardship of historic resources at the state, tribal and local levels.