Primary sources, to include letters, diaries and official correspondence, as well as postwar memoirs and regimental histories, should form the foundation upon which any historian constructs their narrative. Still, officers often crafted their official reports so as to leave the most favorable impression of their own actions, as well as the actions of their men.…
The Battle of Upperville, which had seen artillery duels, infantry attacks and sweeping cavalry charges across broad vistas of rolling country, ended in a deadly, man on man, street brawl in a narrow road intersection. In that brief but deadly maelstrom Wilson Vanatta was struck by a carbine bullet just below his right knee. The operations…
Wilson Vanatta (aka Vannatta) was born in Steubenville, Ohio, just across Ohio River from, what is today, West Virginia, and only ten miles from the Pennsylvania line. Vanatta enlisted in the 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry on August 26, 1861. He was a farmer, 22 years of age, five feet, ten inches tall, with a fair complexion and brown eyes and…
I worked for Bob Hubbard from 1987 until his retirement in 1992. The details have slipped away over the years, but at some point Bob and I discussed the area around Sangster’s Station and the fight at the blockhouse. Bob recalled having once seen a small monument at the scene of the fight. He also…
Back in the 1980s, when I first became aware of this fight, I was intrigued by the identification of the regimental standard captured by the Confederates that evening. The flag was identified as belonging to the 164th New York Infantry, but the blockhouse was defended by men from the 155th New York Infantry. The accounts…
Rosser’s attack on the blockhouse was not the first skirmish to take place near Sangster’s Station. Union and Confederate cavalry clashed nearby on March 9, 1862. The Southerners were driven off but Lt. Henry Hidden, 1st New York Lincoln Cavalry, was killed. Lieutenant Hidden is believed to be the first Union volunteer cavalry officer killed in…
In mid-December 1863, just as Jeb Stuart’s troopers thought they were heading into winter quarters, Union general William Averell launched a raid against the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. Another Union force targeted the town of Saunton, Virginia. The Southern troops in the Upper Shenandoah Valley were outnumbered, and in danger of being overwhelmed. In an effort to aid…
Susan Caldwell lived in Warrenton, with her four children, while her husband worked in Richmond. Throughout their years of separation, Susan wrote to her husband regularly, and with a keen eye for the events transpiring around her. In a letter begun on April 17, Caldwell explained how word of the Yankee’s approach reached the Southern troopers…
Just two weeks after Elon Farnsworth’s encounter with the guerrillas, Gen. George Stoneman set out on the mounted raid deemed vital to the success of Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s spring campaign. Hooker’s “high expectations” were immediately crushed, however, by a “drenching northeast storm of wind and rain.” Rather than a quick dash across the Rappahannock…
During the winter of 1862 and the spring of 1863, several Southern units conducted guerrilla operations in Northern Virginia. Companies A and H, 4th Virginia Cavalry, known as the Prince William Cavalry and the Black Horse Troop respectively, were detached from the regiment and, based in Warrenton, conducted independent operations, predominately in Fauquier and Prince…
Small But Important Riots 