Ox Hill: The Civil War Battle That Killed Two Union Generals
Near Dc Northern Virginia, Virginia
On September first, eighteen sixty-two, two days after the Union disaster at Second Bull Run, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson's corps collided with Union forces at a farm called Ox Hill, near present-day Chantilly in Fairfax County, Virginia. The battle was fought in a violent thunderstorm that jammed rifles and reduced visibility to almost nothing. Two Union generals, Philip Kearny and Isaac Stevens, were killed within an hour of each other.
Kearny was shot dead after accidentally riding into Confederate lines in the rain and darkness. The Confederates held the field and blocked the Union retreat route, but failed to destroy the Federal army. Today a small park in a Northern Virginia suburb preserves a fragment of the battlefield, surrounded by subdivisions and a highway.
The two generals' monuments stand within earshot of Route Fifty traffic.
