Trevilian Station: The Largest Cavalry Battle of the Civil War

The railroad junction at Trevilian Station in Louisa County no longer exists, but on two days in June of eighteen sixty-four, more mounted soldiers fought and died on this ground than at any other cavalry engagement of the entire Civil War. What happened here was the largest all-cavalry battle of the conflict, and for one of its participants, George Armstrong Custer, it was a rehearsal for the disaster he would meet twelve years later in Montana.

In the late spring of eighteen sixty-four, General Ulysses Grant was driving south toward Richmond with his Army of the Potomac and needed to keep Confederate attention divided. He ordered his cavalry commander, Major General Philip Sheridan, to ride west, destroy the Virginia Central Railroad, and link up with Union forces operating in the Shenandoah Valley. Sheridan set out from Cold Harbor with ten thousand troopers on June seventh.

The Confederate response came swiftly. Major General Wade Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee, the nephew of Robert E. Lee, pushed their horsemen hard to intercept. They reached Trevilian Station first. On June eleventh, the battle opened in the forests and fields around the depot. Custer's Michigan Brigade, driving forward aggressively, stumbled upon Hampton's unguarded wagon train and captured it, seizing eight hundred prisoners, fifteen hundred horses, ninety wagons, and six caissons. But in their excitement, Custer's troopers allowed themselves to be cut off from the rest of Sheridan's column. Confederate reinforcements closed around them on three sides. Four Michigan regiments were taking fire from every direction. Only Sheridan's personal intervention broke the ring and saved Custer's command. Historians have called it Custer's First Last Stand.

A second day of fighting on June twelfth confirmed the Confederate advantage. Sheridan abandoned his objectives and turned back east, having failed to destroy the railroad or reach the Shenandoah. The Confederate cavalry under Hampton had turned back the largest Union cavalry raid of the war.

Today the battlefield is largely preserved in private hands and farmland, largely unchanged from the fields where more than two thousand casualties were recorded across two days.