George McClellan was building a magnificent army around Washington in 1861 but was being hounded to put it to some use. The stain of First Bull Run had to be erased somehow. To get the president off of his back he decided to take advantage of a Confederate encampment near Leesburg, Virginia that was rumored to be unguarded.
George McCall’s division was marched to Dranesville and the nearby Confederate troops under Nathaniel Evans evacuated Leesburg. Evans was ordered back to Leesburg and took up a defensive position on October 19. McCall was ordered to return to Langley but asked for more time to finish mapping the area, which he was granted. On the Maryland side McClellan ordered Charles Stone to take his men to make a demonstration just to see what Evans would do perhaps hoping to push the Confederates into McCall’s force.
Stone crossed a 100 men from the Maryland side of the Potomac River and made a demonstration but Evans did nothing and the party returned. Around dusk on October 20 another reconnaissance party was ordered into Virginia. The party advanced about 1 mile inland and in the dusk hour mistook trees for a Confederate camp and reported a massive camp to their commander.
Discovering their error of the previous night the reconnaissance party did not report it immediately but did send back word. Stone was unaware and decided to turn the reconnaissance into a raid and crossed more men. A new party now came on scene, the US Senator from Oregon and Colonel Edward Baker and Stone sent him across the evaluate the situation. While en route another messenger arrived and told him that the force had engaged a small force of Confederates. Baker immediately called for every available man to cross the river.
Only a handful of boats were available and a bottleneck soon was created. The US also brought a few mountain howitzers with them to gain firepower. The fighting began around 3:00 PM and ran until dark and the Confederates quickly hemmed the force in. Baker was killed after about an hour and a half into the fighting and is to this day the only sitting US Senator to be killed in battle. The Union troops tried to break out but could not and then a mad dash began to the river to escape. Some were shot down trying to get across the river, some drowned and for days afterwards bodies floated down the Potomac River and washed up in Washington. Some Union troops surrendered.
The two sides had relatively equal numbers, about 1,700 men, but the Union loss exceeded 1,000 men and the Confederate loss was bout 150. With a US Senator dead and another disaster on their hands Congress decided that civilian oversight of the war was necessary and created the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. It’s first target was Stone, whose career was ruined and was even imprisoned for a time and it would be a thorn in the side of Union officers for the remainder of the war.
What is left of the battlefield is preserved as the Ball’s Bluff Battlefield Regional Park.