Pleasonton crosses the Rappahannock at dawn; Stuart's cavalry fights all day to hold Fleetwood Hill
Three weeks after his army's triumph at Chancellorsville, J.E.B. Stuart had just staged a grand review of nearly 9,000 Confederate horsemen near Brandy Station, Virginia — an ego-fed spectacle that exhausted the horses and drew mockery from the Southern press. At 4:30 a.m. on June 9, 1863, Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton's 11,000 Union troopers crossed the Rappahannock in a dense fog and hit Stuart's camps from two directions at once. The all-day mounted fight that followed — surging back and forth across Fleetwood Hill — ended with the Federals withdrawing, but the Confederate cavalry's aura of easy dominance over their Union counterparts did not survive the day.
Brandy Station marked the moment the Union cavalry stopped being the poor relation of the Army of the Potomac. The Federal horsemen who rode away that evening were a different force than the one that had crossed the Rappahannock at dawn — steadier, more confident, and capable of the sustained mounted combat that would matter enormously in the weeks ahead at Gettysburg. The Southern press sensed it immediately: the Richmond Enquirer wrote that Stuart had "suffered no little in public estimation."
QWhat single artillery piece — with almost no ammunition — delayed the Union capture of Fleetwood Hill?
When Col. Percy Wyndham's Union brigade arrived at Brandy Station around 11 a.m. and began moving toward Fleetwood Hill, the only Confederate force on the high ground was a single howitzer that had been left behind because it lacked adequate ammunition. Stuart's adjutant, Maj. Henry B. McClellan, ordered Lt. John W. Carter and his gun crew — from Capt. Robert P. Chew's battery — to ascend the crest and fire whatever shells they had. Carter's few rounds were enough to make the Union advance cautious, buying McClellan time to send an urgent dispatch to Stuart calling for reinforcements. Those minutes mattered: Jones's brigade arrived just as Wyndham's men crested the hill.
QWhy did J.E.B. Stuart hold his grand cavalry review twice in four days — and what did his own men think of it?
Stuart staged a full-dress review of nearly 9,000 mounted troopers and four batteries of horse artillery on June 5, 1863, at Inlet Station near Brandy Station. Robert E. Lee was unable to attend, so Stuart repeated the entire performance on June 8 — the day before the battle — in Lee's presence, though this time as a simple parade without battle simulations. The repeat was not universally admired. Some of Stuart's own cavalrymen and the newspaper reporters on the scene complained that Stuart was feeding his ego and exhausting the horses. Lee then ordered the tired troopers back into bivouac and directed Stuart to cross the Rappahannock the very next morning.
QHow did Rooney Lee's wounding at Brandy Station lead to his capture by Union forces two weeks later?
W.H.F. 'Rooney' Lee — Robert E. Lee's son and a Confederate brigadier general — was seriously wounded in the thigh during the fighting at Brandy Station on June 9, 1863. Because of the severity of the wound he could not remain with the army during the opening of the Gettysburg campaign. He was sent to recover at Hickory Hill, an estate near Hanover Court House in Virginia. Union forces located him there and captured him on June 26, 1863 — while his father's army was already deep into Pennsylvania and heading toward its fateful collision at Gettysburg.
