Chantilly: Where Two Union Generals Fell in a Thunderstorm
Near Dc Northern Virginia, Virginia
On the evening of September first, eighteen sixty-two, a violent thunderstorm swept across the fields of Chantilly in northern Virginia. In the middle of it, Stonewall Jackson's men slammed into the rear guard of Pope's retreating Army of Virginia. The result was one of the most chaotic and costly engagements of the war's first two years.
Just two days earlier, the Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee had routed John Pope at Second Bull Run, sending the Federal army reeling northeast toward Washington. Jackson moved fast to cut off the retreat. His column reached Chantilly, then a small plantation estate, and collided with Union divisions under Generals Philip Kearny and Isaac Stevens as they covered the Union withdrawal.
The fighting was savage. Rain fell in sheets, lightning flashed, and the downpour soaked ammunition, forcing men on both sides to rely on bayonets. In the confusion, both Union division commanders were killed within minutes of each other. General Isaac Stevens, a former governor of Washington Territory, was shot through the head while personally carrying a regimental flag forward. General Philip Kearny, one of the most admired soldiers in the Union army, a veteran of Mexico and Italy who had lost his left arm at Churubusco, was killed when he rode accidentally into Confederate lines and refused to surrender.
When Lee heard of Kearny's death, he ordered the general's body and personal belongings returned to the Union army with a note of condolence, a rare gesture of honor.
The Confederates failed to cut off Pope's retreat, and the Union army reached Washington intact. But Chantilly had cost the Union two irreplaceable commanders in a single afternoon, and Jackson's campaign from Second Bull Run through Maryland was only beginning. Today the battlefield is largely buried under a northern Virginia suburb, one of the most completely lost Civil War sites in the eastern theater.
