Hanover Junction

Hanover Junction was one of the most pivotal sites for the well-being of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army, because it was the intersection of two important railroads. The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad ran north from Richmond, past Guinea Station where “Stonewall” Jackson died in 1863, through Fredericksburg and to the Potomac River, while the Virginia Central Railroad also came north from the capital but turned west there through the fertile Piedmont country into the Shenandoah Valley. During the famous campaigns of 1862-64, Lee’s army relied on these railroads for supplies. The first serious threat to the lines came in late May 1864 during the battle at the North Anna River, when most of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad was already in Federal hands and Grant’s army stood on the south bank of the river barely more than one mile away. Lee’s headquarters was in a tent in the southwest angle of the railroad intersection, and Confederate soldiers from Gen. Richard S. Ewell’s Second Corps defended the ground to the north. On May 24, while fighting raged to the west at Ox Ford on the North Anna, Gen. John Gibbon’s division of the Union Second Corps advanced toward the junction. In thick woods just north of there, Gibbon’s men collided with Confederates from Gen. Robert E. Rodes’ division in a violent but inconclusive fight known as the battle of Doswell House. Grant abandoned the North Anna lines without reaching this vital railroad intersection. Before the war, Hanover Junction was famous as the site of Virginia’s largest horse racing track on the Doswell farm just east of the junction. Its proprietor, Major Thomas W. Doswell, had earlier served as a Confederate staff officer. Nearby, the DeJarnette farm suffered from the proximity of 150,000 soldiers and lost all its crops and livestock. Mrs. Margaret Wight, who boarded there, wrote in her diary, “What a time of anxiety and suspense. Nearly all the ladies in the neighborhood are fleeing from their homes.”

Virginia · United States