Episode Details

On June 9, 1863, near Brandy Station in Culpeper County, Virginia, about 20,500 men fought for ten hours in the largest cavalry battle on American soil. Robert E. Lee was preparing to invade the North, and J.E.B. Stuart's 9,500 troopers were screening the army. Stuart staged a grand review on June 5 and repeated it on June 8 because Lee had missed the first. Across the Rappahannock, Alfred Pleasonton gathered about 11,000 men under Joseph Hooker's orders to break up the Confederate cavalry, sending John Buford across Beverly's Ford and David McM. Gregg across Kelly's Ford.

Buford struck at 4:30 a.m. in fog, and Grumble Jones's troopers rode out half-dressed and bareback. Colonel Benjamin F. Davis was killed, and Robert Beckham's horse artillery held near St. James Church. Gregg reached Brandy Station around 11 a.m. and found Fleetwood Hill nearly empty, held by Major Henry B. McClellan and one howitzer with faulty ammunition. Confederate reinforcements reached the crest in time, and Pleasonton withdrew at sunset. McClellan later wrote that the battle made the Federal cavalry.

• The 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry took the highest regimental losses of the day in its charge on Beckham's guns.
• Rooney Lee, Robert E. Lee's son, was badly wounded in the thigh.
• Colonel Alfred N. Duffie's division got lost and missed the fight for Fleetwood Hill.
• Union losses were 907 and Confederate losses 523, and the Richmond Examiner mocked Stuart's puffed up cavalry.
• Developers proposed an office park and a Formula One track, and the field joined a state park in June 2024.