Ball’s Bluff Masked Battery
...held to the bluff without room to retire.
Two hundred yards to your right are the remains of a small earthwork that may have been part of a masked (concealed) battery which played an important role in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff on October 21, 1861. The battery commanded the road from Edwards Ferry on the Potomac River to the town of Leesburg. Union Gen. Charles P. Stone, seeking to reconnoiter Confederate defenses near Leesburg, sent forces commanded by Col. Edward D. Baker across the Potomac about a mile north at Ball’s Bluff. Baker, a U.S. Senator with little military experience, deployed his troops poorly and soon came under heavy attack by the Confederates, commanded by Col. Nathan P. “Shanks” Evans.
Whoever controlled the roadway behind you could control the flow of reinforcements to the battlefield from both Edwards Ferry and Confederate Fort Evans. As the battle began, Stone, then at Edwards Ferry, sent 35 cavalrymen of the 3rd New York Cavalry under Maj. John Mix to scout the road between the ferry and Leesburg. Having learned of the masked battery, Stone ordered Mix to reconnoiter the terrain around it to discover Confederate troop dispositions and to study routes “for the passage of troops,” then withdrew. Just east of here, Mix’s detachment took fire from elements of Col. William Barksdale’s 13th Mississippi Infantry. The Confederates held the road for the rest of the day, reinforced their troops facing Baker, and contributed to the defeat of the Union soldiers atop Ball’s Bluff.
Marker is at the intersection of Edward’s Ferry Road and Battlefield Parkway North East, on the left when traveling east on Edward’s Ferry Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
