Bethel Church
Union Command Meets
Lee vs. Grant - The 1864 Campaign
"At the church…the 9th Corps was marching past, and Burnside was sitting, like a comfortable abbot, in one of the pews, surrounded by his buckish staff whose appearance is the reverse of clerical.”
– Theodore Lyman, aide-de-camp to Meade.
On May 21, 1864, Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside’s Ninth Corps left Spotsylvania and pursued the retreating Confederate army southward. When Rebel cavalry blocked Burnside’s passage of the Po River at Stanard’s Mill, he turned east and followed the Second and Fifth Corps to Guinea Station. He rested his corps there for two hours on May 22 before crossing the Mattaponi River at Downer’s Bridge and proceeding here to Bethel Church.
Grant and Meade met Burnside at the church in the afternoon before establishing their headquarters at the nearby Tyler House. Burnside joined them there later in the day. Encountering Mrs. Tyler, the bewhiskered general pleasantly remarked, “I don’t suppose madam you ever saw so many Yankee soldiers before?” Grant’s staff roared in laughter as the lady replied, “Oh, yes,as prisoners. I have just come from Richmond.”
Marker is on South River Road, on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
