Corbin's Crossroads
Stuart's Close Shave
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River to Virginia and camped at Bunker Hill in the northern Shenandoah Valley after the September 17, 1862, Battle of Antietam. Union Gen. George B. McClellan and the Army of the Potomac slowly pursued, despite President Abraham Lincoln’s demands for speed. At the end of October, Lee ordered Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry to screen the infantry’s march south to Culpeper County. Stuart succeeded in a series of running fights with Union Gen. Alfred Pleasonton’s cavalrymen. Lee’s army escaped and Lincoln replaced McClellan with Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside.
The last cavalry fight occurred here. Stuart and his cavalry moved north from Rixeyville early in the morning of November 10, along with Maj. John Pelham’s Stuart Horse Artillery and Gen. Carnot Posey’s 16th Mississippi Infantry. They attacked part of Union Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis’s infantry division at Corbin’s Crossroads half a mile south of here and pushed the Federals north. About 4 P.M., Union Gen. James Nagle’s infantry brigade flanked Stuart’s forces here. Stuart ordered a withdrawal south to Culpeper County as more Union infantrymen approached but had his men fire on them to “punish their impudence.” When the Federals returned fire, one bullet “punished” Stuart instead, clipping his famous moustache. Maj. Heros von Borcke, a Prussian who was an aide to Stuart, told the story that evening in Culpeper to Lee and his staff, who “were all greatly amused at the loss [of] a personal ornament upon which they knew our cavalry leader greatly prided himself.”
“Looking at Stuart, I saw him pass his hand quickly across his face, and even at this serious moment I could not help laughing heartily when I discovered that one of the numberless bullets that had been whistling around him had cut off half his mustache as neatly as it could have been done by the hand of an experienced barber.”
— Maj. Heros von Borcke
Marker is on Viewtown Road (County Route 642), on the left when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
