Mt. Defiance, the Turnpike, and Middleburg

Mt. Defiance was a cluster of stone buildings along the Ashby’s Gap Turnpike near Middleburg, including a house built in stages beginning in the mid-18th century, a blacksmith’s shop, and a small stone house that may have been the blacksmith’s residence and perhaps was first built as a slave quarter. Once a tavern, it prospered from its location on a network of turnpikes linking Alexandria with Winchester by way of Aldie, the Shenandoah River, and the Blue Ridge, while Middleburg, a mile east, stood as a midpoint in a wealthy agricultural region with a large enslaved population and voted 115-0 for secession in May 1861. During the war, wounded from Second Manassas filled Middleburg’s churches, and John Singleton Mosby’s Confederate guerrilla operations in the surrounding Loudoun Valley beginning in January 1863 brought regular Federal cavalry incursions through town; in 1863 Mt. Defiance’s blacksmith’s shop may also have served as a pre-raid rendezvous point for Mosby. On the steamy Friday of June 19, 1863, this high ground became the must-hold position for Stuart’s Confederate troopers because the stone-walled turnpike here was the main route west to Lee’s army. After a Federal advance into Middleburg from the east early that morning, Colonel John Chambliss placed the 9th and 13th Virginia Cavalry and the 2nd North Carolina on both sides of the turnpike, using stone fences as cover for dismounted sharpshooters, while General Beverly Robertson’s 4th and 5th North Carolina Cavalry formed just to the south along Old Zulla Road. Two artillery batteries were set up just east of the blacksmith’s shop to anchor the line, and a Union six-gun battery under Lt. William Fuller soon took position 1,000 yards east on the heights at Middleburg’s west end, targeting Mt. Defiance as General David MacMurtrie Gregg massed his Union cavalry division for an assault in an effort to push west and determine the location of Lee’s army. The Battle of Middleburg was fought here on June 19, 1863.

Virginia · United States