Ball's Bluff National Cemetery

On October 20, 1861, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, ordered Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone to scout Confederate forces on the Virginia side of the Potomac River near Leesburg. Early on the morning of October 21, Union forces crossed the river to attack what was reported to be an unguarded Confederate camp, but instead encountered Southern troops under Confederate Col. Nathan "Shanks" Evans, and fighting began. Stone then ordered Col. Edward Baker, a U.S. senator, to Ball's Bluff to take charge of Union forces, but his effort to reinforce the troops was delayed because only four small boats were available to transport soldiers across the Potomac River. That delay allowed Evans to call in additional Confederate forces from Leesburg. By late afternoon Baker was dead, panicked Union soldiers retreated, and many drowned trying to swim back across the river. The Union dead were buried on the battlefield in shallow, hastily dug graves. In April 1862, a surgeon with the Pennsylvania Volunteers was sent to Ball's Bluff to identify the dead and found graves in poor condition scattered on the bluff, reporting that it was impossible to determine the state to which the bodies had belonged. In 1865, Lt. Col. James M. Moore, U.S. Army, recommended that the remains be disinterred and removed to a suitable site on the bluff, with their graves marked Unknown United States Soldiers, killed October 21st, 1861. By 1871, the remains of fifty-four soldiers had been interred in twenty-five graves arranged in a semi-circle around a central path, and a red sandstone wall enclosed the cemetery. Efforts to move the remains to Arlington National Cemetery, including a final attempt in 1882, were rejected. Pvt. James Allen, Co. H, 15th Massachusetts Infantry, is the only known burial in the second-smallest national cemetery, and the battlefield and cemetery were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1984.

Leesburg, Virginia · United States