The Battle of Payne’s Farm
A Fruitless Campaign
“In the fight of Johnson’s Division on last Friday I was under as warm a musketry fire as I have experienced for a good while—certainly worse than I have been in since Sharpsburg.” — Let. Col. Alexander S. “Sandie” Pendleton, CSA
“One of the sharpest & best fought affairs of the war. The musketry was the most terrific any of us had ever heard, and the chances of getting off without a decent wound was about as poor as it possibly could have been.” — Col. Charles T. Collis, 114th Pennsylvania Infantry, USA
A few days after the Battle of Payne’s Farm, Union and Confederate forces were poised to fight on a larger scale west of Locust Grove. Both sides planned assaults, but Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee posted his troops in such a strong position along Mine Run that Union Gen. George G. Meade decided to withdraw. This robbed Lee of his opportunity to strike his adversary’s left flank. Both sides returned close to their former positions and made camp for the winter.
Although the battle here was relatively small, the soldiers who fought at Payne’s Farm did not view this as an unimportant engagement. They wrote of a fight equal in ferocity with better-known eastern battles like Antietam, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness. Dwarfed in total losses by Gettysburg and dimmed in retrospect by the apparent uselessness of the entire movement, Mine Run remains a little-known campaign. This very obscurity, however, contributed significantly to the almost unparalleled preservation of this battlefield.
Marker can be reached from Zoar Road (Virginia Route 611) near Zoar School Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
