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Historians hope to bring attention to little-known Orange County battlefield where Union, Confederacy met in a brief but hot fight Date published: 11/13/2009
BY CLINT SCHEMMER Out in the countryside of Orange County, historians are working to breathe new life into an old battle. When complete, their efforts should help the public appreciate one of the Civil War's least-known campaigns, called Mine Run, after the creek of the same name off State Route 20. Mine Run may be as notable for what didn't happen as what did. It involved 145,000 troops and set up what could have been a full-bore, bloody series of battles between the armies led by Union Gen. George Gordon Meade and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. But at the 11th hour, Meade--who had initiated the campaign under pressure from President Lincoln to bag Lee's Army of Northern Virginia--called it quits. "Historians have tended to overlook this campaign because there was no major bloodletting," said Timothy H. Smith, a historian from Gettysburg, Pa. Yet veterans of the Battle of Payne's Farm said its musketry was as hot as anything they'd experienced at Antietam or at Gettysburg, the latter just four months earlier. "This battle has not made a large figure in history, but it was a very sharp engagement," the historian of the 10th Vermont Volunteers wrote later. "Every tree in the thick forest was scarred with bullets and the undergrowth half cut away. How any man could come out of that tremendous storm alive seemed a wonder." The Confederates saw it that way, too. It was "as warm a contest as this regiment was ever engaged in," a member of the 3rd North Carolina Infantry recalled. " It seemed as if the enemy was throwing Minie balls upon us by the bucket-full, when the battle got fairly under way." More than 1,200 casualties were inflicted at Payne's Farm and in a simultaneous encounter along the Orange Turnpike (Route 20). Last week, Smith and three colleagues tromped across the fields and through the woods where the campaign's fiercest battle was fought, on what was Madison Payne's farm near the Rapidan River's Raccoon Ford.
because President Lincoln canned him and brought Grant in to run the US Army.
Close on that one bud. Actually it was the other way around, Union named them for prominent bodies of water on or near the battlefield and Confederates the nearest town. They do not signify who won by who gets to name it, the NPS chooses the names of battles in the South and they have historically chosen the Confederate names over the years. Nobody actually won this battle by historical accounts.
Kudos to the historians and the organizations involved in this interpretive effort. Once the interpretation is complete it will be a true outdoor classroom for visitors to learn from and contemplate the conflict and its aftermath, and how those events helped shape our nation.
The name of the tavern at Routes 20 and 611 was ROBINSON's Tavern.
Preserving and interpreting battlefields is no easy task. Orange is lucky that organizations are still interested in preserving its cultural heritage and making it available to everyone, even though the county government is so opposed to battlefield preservation.
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