And the spotsville military park, he is now working as an interpreter in military programs at the colonialsburg foundation. He lives in williamsburg with his wife johanna, and please welcome we join me in welcoming ryan quint. Well, thank you. How is everyone doing . Yeah. Everybody excited to be here . Yeah. Good. It would not be a great answer if you said no, because we are five minutes into the program. Awesome to see you and great to see some not so familiar faces. I was so excited when the program was announced with the forgotten battles of the civil war. And so my book was in 2017 and then the question was whats next . At the time i worked at the s s slosingberg park. And so when you look into some of the battles the smaller they are, the easier they are to be forgott forgotten, and i then found dranesville that i have been working on and hope the make a book out of it. So, polling the audience. Has anyone heard of the battle of dranesville . Okay. Second question, do you know where it is on a map . Okay. Less hands and good number. So lets figure that out in the beginning. It helps to turn it on. Okay. First things first. Where is the town of dranesville. Dranesville is 15 miles east of leesberg, and 20 miles west of washington, d. C. So the battle that we are talking about right here, and this is dranesville, and the engagement that we will be talking about comes from december of 1861, and the first year of the war is not even over yet, and we are going to be talking about the engagement of the confederate and the union armies in the beginning of the war so you can find out more about the deal, and find out that this is the battle of essentially that happens as two forces with ostensibly the same purpose, and forging expedition to run into each other. And one is led by jeff stewart and one led by edward ford. And so what is this story of armies exploring West Virginia and find out they dont like them very much. News to me when i found that out. But dranesville is important in the grand scheme of thing, because it is a Union Victory. It is a Union Victory in december of 1861 that comes on the heels of defeat at bulls run in manassas and leesburg or bald bluff and defeat in missouri at wilsons creek, and this defeat albeit small is enough of an upboost to the flagging union morale, and so it is needed in the spring. So lets hop into it. July 1861 is when the union suffered defeat in bulls run. So they held up outside of the fairfax courthouse, and the idea to keep an eye on the union force, because they are coming close to the Union Capitol and coppi coming into forces outside of the capital. So we need a force to come in and gain control if you are in the union army and that person is of course, george b. Mcclellan. He was fighting robert e. Lee and then comes east aft. And when he arrives in washington, mcclellan is going to start organizing the defeated forces. He writes to the wife, but some force of magic, i have become the power of the land. Say what you will about George Mcclellan and you will given the opportunity, but he is the man that government needs at this moment. He is the man who is going to fix the union army. If i am being kind of vague with the union and confederate armies and the armies of the potomac, but in the fall, both of the armies are called the army of the potomapotomac, and so i wil confusion sake just call them the army and the confederates. And so coming down, the soldiers were waiting for orders. The slides here is of one of the Union Soldiers. This is charles vail of the 9th pennsylvania reserves. And he going to fight at the battle of dranesville. And so he and his force had been formed, but the War Department had turned them down. They had raised too many soldiers for the initial roll, and the War Department said that we dont need that many people, because the war is going to be over in 90 days or whatever it s and the governor of pennsylvania has a great idea of turning it into a reserve corps and calling in for the battle at harrisburg, and so you will get this quote of the boxcars or the cattle cars bringing all of the Union Soldiers from harrisburg to washington and the defenses of washington are bufd up a little bit. Again, he is going to fight at the battle of dranesville. And you will see by the late summer or early fall kind of the basic disposition. And you will see the union army has created a buffer around the capital, and the Confederate Army with the majority of the forces in fairfax have created a series of outposts at places Like Falls Church and baileys crossings, and these outposts are within eyesight of the capital. Confederate flags can be seen from washington flying just outside of the capital which is of course going to make Abraham Lincoln very uneasy, the idea of them being this close, and what is preventing them from attacking. So what i want to focus on are the next two people. And familiar faces to us although. And on the left is Brigadier General jeff long street, and on the right is stewart. So longstreet is in charge of all of them, and stewart is in charge of the men coming in. And so together, they are working in conjunction in charge of the outposts and they work together, longstreet and stewart compliment each other very well throughout the fall and winter of 1861. What you will start to see is stewart with the longstreets guiding force, and stewart is getting more aggressive and more aggressive and pushing the soldiers closer to washington with every passing day. We go to a new map. For kind of clarity sake, you will notice up here is arlington, and you all know where arlington is on the potomac river, and to baileys crossing there, and then the calvary force is there on top of munson hill. The confederate outpostop rating the munson and miners hill. And munson is the tallest. And so there is a skirmish of fall of 1861, and stewarts men push back, and longstreet is pushing forward. And so stewart had proven himself, and these engagements will help to build his credibility, but with the credibility and with the accolades comes more responsibility. And we will see how stewart does or does not live up to the expectations. So, as we are moving to the next one, what i wanted to show you is what appears in the harpers weekly of munsons hill, and you will see in the wood cut, a prominent confederate flag. That is what can be seen from washington. The union army under George Mcclellan are intent of getting rid of that flag. Mcclellan is pressured by president lincoln and mcclellan is pressed by the war secretary at the time Simon Cameron and get rid of the outposts, and that is what he is trying to do. So to give you an idea of one of the quotes, one of the union accounts says that men can see one another plainly without a looking glass. So sharp shooting potshots and cannon aiding are going back and forth. And so there is also balloons sent into the air so that all of the activity is going on in Fairfax County right outside of washington, d. C. Stewarts first big test comes august 28th when a union force pushes out of baileys crossroad and he immediately pushes them back. So the army says that, this is not working. So if Baileys Crossroads is not working, we have to look elsewhere. And so the union army changes the eyesight, and instead of heading straight into Fairfax County, we have to go around. So at a place called chain bridge, and we sent the attachment across the river and set up a union camp, and barely recognize it and barely identifiable today and becomes a stepping off point for the union forces, and you see from the map what this idea is. And if this is not working, go around. And what their eyes will start to turn towards is the small island of lewinsville, and as of this date, it has been eaten up by washington and everything in the suburbs, but lewinsville is a small, small village where all of these converge. These of course are roads. So every place that a road converges is a place that the union army figures they can get a foothold out of washington, and get out of the confines and spread the wings a little bit and get comfortable and spread out and push the Confederate Forces back, and that is the idea of lewinsville, and that turned out to be a test run of what is the battle of dranesville, and here we are in the spring and the fall of 1861, and specifically in the opening days of september of 1861. Lewinsville is only six miles from chain bridge, and so that the Union Garrison has crossed the river, and it is an easy hop, skip and a jump. And that i can begin to push the Confederate Forces back. So as we continue on, keep that in mind, that is the idea. The village, itself, it is hardly impressive and again, a wood cut appears in harpers weekly, and they can say this is what they say a miserable broken downtown and very virginian in aspect. A wisconsin soldier says it consists of a church, horsedrawn store and that is all. So they have a little bit of the arrogance, and it does not matter how many houses there are, but it is what is shown on the road. That is the point, get out of washington. And so it is falling to these three men to do that. On the left is William Smith nicknamed ball di. A baldy and on the right is Catherine Griffin of the u. S. Military. And these are famous names for those who study the civil war, and it is interesting early in the war, and when do you hear Charles Griffin referred to as the captain, and down the road, he is a general and yelling at george mead, and here in the fall of 1861, he 2 captain of the u. S. Artillery, and it is smiths division of new yorkers and indianians to push out, and he is giving orders to Isaac Stevens to go to the town of lewinsville, and he is going to have 1,800 men, Isaac Stevens. And so what he is going to do is not to start a big battle. Mcclellan and big battles dont really jive, do they. So mcclellan is especially saying, go out, and go on the reconnaissance and grab some forces, but do not start a big battle. That is stevens only instruction. Smith will give stevens the following instructions and kind of following that. The instructions are to not prevent a general engagement in any circumstance, and he is to leave for ethan allen and go to lewinsville, and gather intelligence and forage and go back to ethan allen without a big fight. That is what he is going to do. So he is going to leave in the morning of december 11th, 1861, and jumping from ethan allen, he arrives in lewinsville by the morning. What he is going to do is that stevens is organizing the force and defense. So if we break it down a little bit. In the semicircle, they are guarding all of the roads that we are talking about. The rest of infantry is gathered along the Road Networks and if a fight starts, that i can mobilize like a rabbit Intervention Team and fight them. Griffins four guns will guard every road intersection with one gun and reserve and finally, in comes the lieutenant of the engineers orlando poe. And gathering with the theme of soldiers to become greater thing, and this is the lieutenant sherman in 1861. So the plan is to map make and find out where those roads go. So the soldiers are doing exactly that. When the soldiers came to lieu winsvill lieuwinsville, there were a handful of soldiers who went down the road. When they see them, they said, what can they do . But what the soldiers are doing is racing down to jeb stewarts headquarters at falls church. Because if stevens is supposed to go out and quickly come back, stewart is the opposite, the Confederate Response Team who can mobilize and meet any threat along the outposts. And so stewart hears word of the foraging expedition, and he gathers up a mock force or ad hoc force and he has 1,800 men in lewinsville, and stewart managed to get 500 soldiers together. On the far right is the lieutenant of the hill infantry and he provided 300 men. And rosser will have two cannons, and stewart brings about 50 or so mounted soldiers from the first virginia cavalry. And so he is to go to lewinsville and stop stevens from whatever he is doing. But remember, stevens is not supposed to get into a general engagement. That is important in a second. So we go back to the map here. You have the arrival of the 13th virginia and so a wing here and a wing there. And under the cover of the military bombardment from the two cannons, they close in on the union forces and so a skirmishing starts outside of the town. And so he has been told not the put on a general engagement, and so when there is a skirmish, they fall back. So that is what they do. They fall back and they open fire. And griffins cannons respond back to rosser and for 45 minutes or so, these cannon were going back and forth in an artillery duel. Not many casualties, but lots of shelling, and mcclellan can hear that from washington and telegrams chain bridge and says what is happening over there . Why is the whole world opening up over there. As the skirmish continues, and the attack, stevens gathers up his men and he remembers no general engagement. So as the fighting is an hour and hour and half, he returns to ethan allen and stevens has accomplished the objective, gone the lewinsville, and gathered the intelligence and went and gathered up the foraging, and went back. And now for for lewinsville, he just showed up 500 men, and outnumbered 3 1 and pushed the forces back. So you have different opinions of what happens at the battle of lewinsville. On the top is james longstreet, and he advocates for his promotion to Brigadier General and this is what stewart gets. Congress gives stewart promotetn to Brigadier General. And mcclellan sees this in the opposite. Our men came back in perfect order, and we shall have no more bull run affairs. So both sides in the weird quirk see lewinsville as a success, and that is what you should look at it. Lewinsville has 15 Union Casualties and a handful, and Single Digits of confederate casualties. So in the great scheme of things, it is not a big deal, but it is a trial run of dranesville, because in stewarts mind, he has gone out with an outnumbered force to beat a huge party and forces them back with little casualties, and that is what is going to happen in december of 1861 with different consequences. So as we are moving forward in time, the union army in late september of 1861 goes back to lewinsville. They establish camp griffin at lewins 1ri8, and that is the william fifth division, and the second division, the pennsylvania reserves, the ones we talked about a moment ago, and they come the langley and establish camp peerplot. And what is there today . Nothing. Gone. Under asphalt. So now two divisions around lewinsville and langley and that is scaring the bejeebers out of the high command. So going back to the map. The confederate force in Fairfax County is unnerved by the two divisions so under general Joseph Stewarts command, they fall back. So they have given washington, d. C. , some breathing room, and with that comes the ability of more union foraging parties to go to the outlying areas and get more intelligence and food. These are the foraging parties and that is going to bring us back to dranesville. Dranesville is right here and it is blurry in the backfield and this is lewinsville and langley. And as they are going to pick up more food, and remember in the beginning i sthad taid that the civilians wither not happy to have them in the area. Story, but they go there three times and then they rest and go back to prison. Most of them with arrested for shooting at u. S. Pickets, and some of the populous said that some of the dranesville residents have decapitated heads on the sign posts, and false, but it got attention of the government officials. So as the union is familiar with the town of dranesville and arresting the civilians, they are noticing a lot of fertile territory, and a lot of hay and grain and oats for the taking. Because the Confederate Army is in centerville, and union in washington, and so this is nomansland and whoever gets there first will get the stuff. So in october of 1861, the reserves are sent to dranesville to gather the supplies. That is going to create a snowball effect. Because october 19th and 20th, what else is going on . Charles stone is planning his expedition against leesburg and that is the battle of balds bluff. And stewart thinks that mcclellan is there to help him, but he is not. And what if he had continued down the road and goes the leesburg, and the battle of balls bluff may have happened drastically different or been a Union Victory, but since he doesnt, stone is left in the air. Stone is defeated. Edward baker is killed. Big defeat. But for the union army, it is also a success, because they are again getting more intelligence on the road. And so you have this time continuing to go to the town itself. And because the union army is coming here so many times, they are starting to mention the reports, and instead of the brick house they say the thornton house and so familiar with the area, they know the houses and who lives there and this is a territory they know. And so as we are coming to talk about the battlefields we talk about the Confederate Army of having the advantage of knowing the area, be new the fall of 1861, who knows the area better . The union or Confederate Forces . Who has been to the town three times . That is a huge impact, because this red square is the battlefield. This is where the soldiers are going to be fighting. This is intimately familiar with the Union Soldiers but not so much the confederate soldiers, and so you have building suspense going on. We come to these two men, and familiar face, yeah. Left of course is John Fulton Reynolds and right is George Gordon mead, and they become important in 1863 ar yu bli, and then in 1861, they are Brigade Commanders. So on each of the union treks as you could say out the dranesville, one of them leads it. So reynolds goes out, and commands the expedition and then mead goes out to command the expedition, and mead is none too pleased with what he is doing. And for example, this house here belongs to a man named john gunnell who is a fiery secessionist in the area and his farm is ground zero for stealing forage. And lee does not believe it should be in the armys business to take that stuff, and so he said, it is sad to do such injury, and the cause to thus allow on the individuals. It is important to remember that these armies are young, and lot to learn. This war is more vicious as the time goes on, and the reason that i mention the two expeditions is because the pennsylvania reserves have three brigades, and if reynolds was the first one and mead led the first one and then who led the third one. This is edward osso krepid ward, and his brother is placid. And so he is going to jump from captain to Brigadier General because of a very good friend of his named julius gueroshey. He goes from being a captain to Brigadier General, and so he has strings to pull. Heed a been william shermans roommate in fact, and in 1859 he attended the Artillery School in fort monroe, and so he knows his business. He is going to be given instructions to go to the area for the third time. So he gets the orders on december 19th, 1861. Here they are. The object of this expedition is twofold. One, secure all of the civilians that we have been talking about. Secondly, gather forage. And so, he has the marching orders and headed to town on december 20th, and make sure that the townspeople are not a bunch of troublemakers and gather food and come back to langl langley. So he gathers the force up, and these are reservists in the pennsylvania reserves, and he has about 1,900 men is early in, and a so since when are the regimens about 5,500 soldiers . You dont hear that. They average out to 900 men each. And so he is marching out of langley of peerplot in Early Morning december of 1861. So if stewart got word of the strike force in unionsville, did he get word of the force going to dranesville . Of course he did. In late december he writes that he came to their camp, and stewart explain head is going to dranesville to stop this union expediti expedition. And he is ordered to ride to johnsons Head Quarters to get the approval of the expedition. To give you the idea of what he is going through, he rides throughout the night at 7 00 p. M. , and it is pitch black and middecember and really cold. So by the time he gets back to johnsons head quarter, it is about 4 00 a. M. But he has the approval. So stewart gathers up soldiers of his own, and he is ready to go. I mention here that stewart has somewhere between 1,600 and 2,500 men, and i mentioned that, because in his own report, stewart said that he had 1,600 soldiers in his command, and more likely that he has 2,500, and cut to the chase for a second. Stewart gets his butt kicked at dranesville, and so if you want to get your butt kicked, you have to write a report, do you report more or less people . So he explains the battle by saying that he had fewer. He also had 300 wagons of his own, and stewart is doing the same. He is also going to go to dranesville and gather supplies and head back tom k m kcamp, an ostensibly, two competing expeditions with empty wagons looking for supplies converging on each other. They are going to hit into each other. This here it is not a very good map. Dont worry about it. We will get to a better one in a second. This is the leesburg pike, and leesburg is down here, and this is the town of dranesville, and what i wanted to point out here is the blue lines and the red lines, and these are the skirmishers, and the men, the skirmishers are going to run into each other by accident. Ed and they will realize that the forces are much, much closer in proximity and what stewart runs into the trouble of is that they are in a bunch of pine trees and you cant move around in a pine tree, and the union army is going to have all of the roads to maneuver around. And the union army wins the footrace to dranesville and wins the Higher Ground outside of town. These two skirmishing units of company e of the pennsylvania reserves and the bucktails and the pittsburgh rifles will open the battle of dranesville. It is around noontime and 1 00ish on december 20th, 1861, and this is one of the accounts of the ninth pennsylvania reserves and the man fighting over here. So we were so intently watching the approaching column that we forgot that the boys in gray could deploy the skirmishes, and then zip, zip, zip the balls were coming in. And then laying down, when the skirmishers wanted to fight, we rallied. So the opening shots occurred an they fall back to the turnpike to the remaining force. In the opening shots, 20yearold Alexander Smith from pittsburgh, pennsylvania, is shot in the neck. He is goes to die two weeks later and he is first casualty, and he is buried in pittsburgh. So this 20yearold kid falling in the pine trees as everybody else is falling back in confusion. So now the battle is joined. I mentioned that ord wins the footrace, and before we go further, this is eds map. There you go. You will see a lot of the cool maps this weekend and he made all of these. And ed surprised me with the email and said, surprise, made you a map. This is the best map that exists ever on the battle of dranesville, and so ed alexander deserves a huge round of applause. And so, again, you will see the maps over the course of the weekend. But ord wins, again, the footrace to dranesville and he has the turnpike and faster mobility, and the high ground of what is called dranes hill. And this is a wood cut that appears in harpers weekly, but it is accurate as far as i can tell. This is the leesburg pike, and the artillery and the pine trees and the third army in the distance, so the battle is unfolding. The battle will hinge early in the fight on two individuals. One is this man right here. This is Lieutenant Colonel thomas cain of the bucktails and he is going to go on the command the union forces at coateshill, and the other person is captain hezikiah eastfield. Y easton. And so you can see him coming to dranesville, and this is a turkey shoot, because they are firing straight down the hill after the Confederate Forces come out of the pine trees. Thomas kaine leading his forces to fight says they will open fire against bucktails. So you have the union forces firing out of the positions on the roadwork, and this fighting will continue. And they write that the canno cannoniev fell like autumn leaves before hurricanes. Remember that only three years earlier, ward had gone to Artillery School in fort monroe and he is in the thick of it. As a Brigade Commander he is leading the battery to tell them where to put their pieces, and he is playing a pivotal role in the engagement, and the opposite is not true for confederates. In the smoke cloud here it would have been located the cutts battery. And so they dont know what to do with the guns. He tries to order them to deploy, but the road is not wide enough and too many pine trees and the battle of four guns that they can unlimber two at a time. And they are stacked on top of eachthis, and set like shooting at fish in a barrel, because the artillery is hitting them downhill every time. So a graphic account comes from the confederate artillery officer who is going to explain the situation, explaining that two men on the three gun were standing in the gally firing shots when their heads were severed from their bodies. Several accounts note this. And it is the soldiers First Experience in combat. So when they see this shot come in and take off two mens heads, it sticks with them. So account after account after account mentions this moment. One of the cannons of the sumpter artillery was borrowed from jeff daviss artillery and they will find grain in the wheel spoke, and so it is grisly, and it is going to continue for an hour to two hours. If you want to make progress on the union line, you have to get rid of the cannons, and so it is falls to the confederacy unit to try to pull them off. So as you are talking about the regimgiments in order, this is fighting at the same time. One of the regiments was in virginia. They had fought two days before blacksburg, and three days before manassas and only men with combat experience, but they run into the same problem, pine trees. The colonel here is colonel garland and trying to lead them ahead, but he cant see anything. The visibility is 50 yards of the pine trees. To give you an idea of what is going on, a soldier writes our regiment didnt do much firing because we were within 200 yards of the battery and they could have slaughtered every one of us with canister if we had shown ourselves n. This confusion, two of the companies wandered off into the pines and get lost. They are disconnected from the regiment and they cant find anything, and so they hunker down and wait for tend of the ee battle. And another soldier screams stand your ground or die. So stewart is running around like a chicken with his head caught off and cannot take control, but this is not lewinsville, because the union army had crumbled, but in dranesville, they are standing and making him pay for every step they take. So stewart sends a second regiment to help out, and that is the 10th alabama. They attack. They will suffer some of the highest casualties of the day. Kind of an idea going on here, they run into the series of pennsylvanians, and the pennsylvanian writes, we want all to fire, and it is instantly thrown into confusion, and another fire retreated to the woods from which they had just advanced, and in the 10th alabama attacked out of the pines and into the clearing, and so as they were attacking into the clearing, they are lit up like a christmas tree. It is horrendous casualties. On the left, as the Lieutenant Colonel, and a man named james b. Martin who is a judge from alabama has a leave of absence from the army to attend the court. He didnt want to miss the action with the regiment, and he stays with them, and shot twice in the chest and killed them instantly, and on the right, colonel john forny gets the arm shattered and he goes down. So within a matter of minutes they are losing their colonel, and assistant colonel, and then alabama retreats in wild confusion. In the same confusion continuing on the left side of the road. Here is the 6th South Carolina running into the same problem. They are attacking into position, and one of the confederate soldiers said that we had as bad of a position as we could, and being in the thick of the pine shubs th s of the pine shubs thhrubs of wh were doing, and then one of the men named john bratton and the order was given to all to fall to the ground, and i gave it if nobody else did, to bev, one of the cousins that the wives could not know our condition as the bullets were sailing overhead. As the firing continues, this grave here is to a 17yearold. This is frank english from columbia, South Carolina. Frank english, 17 years old is killed instantly in the battle of dranesville. Bratton and english were cousins. Bratton wrote the telegram back home saying that he is dead. So this fighting is going to get worse however when behind the 6th South Carolina comes the 1st kentucky infantry. The 1st kentucky sees the 6th carolina in the distance, and thinks they are confederate soldiers. And so he said, he heard ready, aim and then he saw the kentuckians with the kneeling position, and then instantly a solid crashing volley. So six south carolinians are going to be hit from the front, and then officers in the back, and they break to the rear which leaves the First Kentucky to figure out the problems. They get so close to the pennsylvanians that they start to calling out to each other, and what regiment are you . What regiment are you . They run into the 9th pennsylvania reserves who wait, because they dont know who is in front of them, and they learn who they are when the kentuckians open fire. So the volleys are exchanged at 50, 60 yards and right into each other, and in the confusion of the battle, the colonel is going to be Thomas Taylor and he is separated from the fighting, and he has to wait for nightfall to go to the battlefield. And so when they are pinned behind the enemy lines, they have darkness and creeped back to the confederate camp. With the first kentuckian falling back as well, you will have this sketch, and basically showing the end of the fight. Now, if you can compare the leesburg turnpike is right here, and the thornhouse is here, and the union forces are attacking as the confederates retreat from the battle. It takes two hours, and the battle of dranesville lasts about two hours. And stewart is left holding the pieces. Stewart is left so disheveled that he will gather up the reins of the horses and try to drive them back himself. And a Brigadier General is holding a bunch of reins of deadhorses and out of his element. He writes to his wife here. And i like this quote. Men were falling like tin pins around me, but i was unscathed. So this battle of the bullets and the shells flying through the air, and the newspaper, the harpers weekly has this at the end of the battle. Talks about the horrors of the battle, the dead and the dying all around, and for the wounded that could be removed, they get brought down the road to the place called the frying pan meetinghouse. This becomes a Field Hospital for the forces, and then regiments descend to help the wounded and dead and dying. And so then they pick up the dead and wound and bring them back to washington, and the worst of the confederate wounded are left this dranesville in private home, and so the fighting starts to peter out and finally end. Losses. Notice on the left, the union army has 68 casualties and the stewart army has about 28 battles. This not a big battle. And not antietam or gettysburg, but for the soldiers going in nor firfor the first team and s men getting killed. And so for South Carolina, these 69 soldiers is 20 of what they brought into battle. The first fight, you will lose 20 , and what kind of experience that leaves them. Well, in the aftermath of the defeat, you will get of course blaming. This is interesting to note that people dont know who jeb stewart is going to become, and so this is another guy who doesnt know what he is doing. This is a selma, alabama, reporter, and he says that he has risen above his standings, and they will eat their words in the spring of 1862, and in the winter of 1861, they will see a general inept and general not doing anything, and confederate soldier writes it is the work of general stewart, and the cavalry general distinction, and infantry officer if you may judge by the affair, and it is one that you will see and the most awfully managed. Joseph johnston and beauregard are unimpressed with jeff stewart and he feels sleighted, have i no brothers in congress. So that sways back and forth. In the middle of all of that, the union army is left high and mighty. Not only did they win the fight, but they gathered up 100 wagons full of forage. And so they move back to washington, and check success, and check success and pretty good day. Again, coming on the heels of defeat at manassas and balls bluff and the morale is high, and then the secretary of war George Cameron writes that it is a bright spot to give the assurances of the coming events, and the effect must be to inspire confidence and to the here after, and the cause is to triumph, and andrew curtain is coming down the langley and instructs the instructions to find in gold letters dranesville inscribed on their back and they are the only ones who have it. Again, the morale is soaring high. This is what ward had to say. Ward thought that it was ooht day in the park. My artillery slaughtered them whether they were cooped up or jammed in the road. It was the old story, they had an ignoramus as a general and fool for artillery officer and i took it for granted and made the reconnaissance and posted the artillery where i should have placed it and smashed it well. So judge stewart is called an ignoramus by his opponent. Lets get to the end. The battle of dranesville is going to recede from memory pretty quick. The confederates dont write about it, because they move on, and the Union Soldiers stop writing about it when they get to manassas and antietam and fredericksburg, but they will come back to it. It is the dedication of the 9th pennsylvania monument at ge gettysburg, and they will remember it. When it is time for annual meetings on the anniversary of dranesville, and even the regiments who did not fight there, they had it as close to december 20th, because is pit first victory they had, and the first victory they put under their pocket or belt, so it is something they have for them. They keep it in mind, and for this one from 1903. The membership of the association is becoming reduced by natural causes. And so the soldiers are dying of old age, but they still remember dranesville. So what i wanted to finish with is one last slide, this one. I dont expect you the read this. This is 272 names. The 272 names of the tas s of t of dranesville, and the wounded and the captured of dranesville. So why did the battle matter . Because they matter. Their memory matter, as. So with that, i thank you all for listening, and we will go on from here to have a great weekend and thank you so much. [ applause ] anybody have any questions . Anybody . Everybody okay . Over here in the corner. Takes me a second to cover this real estate. Talking about the citizens and speaking of the officers at this point of the it is. It is already escalating and that is why mead writes back to his wife. This is not what i am supposed to do, but their justification of it is that john gunnell serves in the Confederate Army and he is an officer and so it is not a random citizen, but confederate officer they are taking it from, but mead writes to his wife and says that is not what i am here for. So that attitude, you will notice that it is distinctly different as the war continues and here in the fall of 1861, people like mead are questioning what are we doing here . He is very mcclellanite about it in the opinion, dont touch peoples stuff, but that opinion starts to change of course as the war continues. Chri chris . Can you tell us where you from . John from lexington, connecticut. This is like an old boys club. And so there is one connected and who is the chief of staff . The chief of staff, and ward names one of his sons after gra grasshay. And he was killed . Yes. That is amazing. Thank you. And up here. And now coming up here towards the front. Introduce yourself, please. Im jeb paul, and my question is that stewart said that he had 1,500, and he said that it should be correct and was he challenged by the media about the youth how to pretty easily be provable. And he has people to report to, and he would know the composition, and so that is many i question, was he, you know, what is the evidence that he had more than 1,600 . Well, it is good that you mentioned the news reports, because that is why i believe he had more than that. There were private soldiers writing back home the places like alabama and richmond that they had 2,500 soldiers and so the soldiers with the column and riding the regiments out explain they have more and that why i hesitate toward that, and when you are mentioning the superiors that is something that drives me in sane, because johnson and beauregard never write a report or dispatch, and so the thing that is driving me in insane is who told him to go to dranesville, and so i have been working on this for three years and i cant find anything. Beauregard does not mention it in the dispatches, and it is not mentioned in the memoirs, but i dont know why he knew where to go, because callaway rode to johnsons headquarters and got the go ahead, but where to go, i dont know. The reason that stewart has the regiments that he has, and he is in charge of the outposts of the Confederate Army, and regiments were rotated every day or so or five days and rotated in and out, and it is these regiments that are going to be on the outpost duty that day, and that how we get to the infantry regiment, but i dont have johnson saying, i told stewart to go to a with this set of instructions or anything. It is written off of other soldiers accounting writing to the newspaper saying that we had more than 1,600 people. Other questions . One of the things that i have always found fascinating about this battle is that i think that jeb stewart has some of the best days of the war commanding infantry, as you think about in spot sylvania, and the third day at chancellorsville, and we forget about the warmup, but it is amazing repercussions coming up. And chris just hit the genesis of the project, because when i was working on chancellorsville, and for stewart to take over, my question was if he had ever commanded an infantry, and it is this one. So welcome to rabbit hole one. So it is may 8th commanding williams hill, he is taking the lessons and learning from them. May 1863, he is asking them to come out of the wilderness, so maybe a little bit of disconnect, because you should not be whistling when your guys are being slaughtered to that degree. So he is learning in 1861, and 1863 and 1864 right before his death, but this is the rabbit hole that i went down when i wondered if he had commanded any other forces. He said rabbit hole number one, and so imagine there are others. Ladies and gentlemen, ryan quist. All week, we are featuring American History tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan3. Lectures in history, american artifacts, reel america, the civil war, oral history, the presidency and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan3. This week, American History tv is on cspan3 every day with prime time features each night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Tonight, the 75th anniversary of the battle of the bulge where adolf hitler launched a surprise counter offensive against allied forces. Watch American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. American history tv products are now available at the new cspan online store. Go to cspan store. Org to see what is new from American History tv and check out all of the cspan products. The house will be in order. 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