After the September 17, 1862, Battle of Antietam, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River to Virginia and camped at Bunker Hill in the northern Shenandoah Valley while Union Gen. George B. McClellan and the Army of the Potomac slowly pursued. At the end of October, Lee ordered Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry to screen the infantry’s march south to Culpeper County, and Stuart succeeded in a series of running fights with Union Gen. Alfred Pleasonton’s cavalrymen, allowing Lee’s army to escape before Lincoln replaced McClellan with Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside. The last cavalry fight occurred here on the morning of November 10, when Stuart moved north from Rixeyville with Maj. John Pelham’s Stuart Horse Artillery and Gen. Carnot Posey’s 16th Mississippi Infantry, attacked part of Union Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis’s infantry division at Corbin’s Crossroads half a mile south of here, and pushed the Federals north. About 4 P.M., Union Gen. James Nagle’s infantry brigade flanked Stuart’s forces here, and Stuart withdrew south to Culpeper County as more Union infantry approached, though he had his men fire on them to “punish their impudence.” When the Federals returned fire, a bullet clipped Stuart’s famous moustache, and that evening in Culpeper Maj. Heros von Borcke, a Prussian aide to Stuart, told the story to Lee and his staff, who were greatly amused.
