BATTLE OF THE MOUNTS

As Union brigadier general George Armstrong Custer barked out orders, the troops of his Michigan Brigade perfected their defense, churning up the dust as they deployed. They had just captured a large number of Confederate wagons, caissons, horses, and prisoners. But they were behind enemy lines in Virginia. Southern cavalrymen had the 800 Michiganders surrounded, caught inside what one Union trooper called “a living triangle.”

As enemy troops swirled around them, many of Custer’s squadrons remained mounted—a requirement for quick counterthrusts—but some took to the ground. On the eastern edge of the encirclement, dismounted horsemen hurriedly knelt behind a fence-rail barricade, their Spencer repeating carbines glistening in the midmorning sun.

When the Confederates attacked, they suddenly seemed to be everywhere at once. According to Michigan trooper Harmon Smith, they were fighting “at the front, in the rear, at the right and at the left.” Shouting above the incessant firing, a muddled officer asked Custer whether they should move the captured Rebel property to the rear. “Yes, by all means,” the young general replied. “Where in hell is the rear?”

When the Confederates attacked, they seemed to be everywhere at once.

Fought on June 11 and 12, 1864, the Battle of Trevilian Station was a contest between two of the war’s most aggressive cavalry commanders: Union major general Philip Sheridan and Confederate major general Wade Hampton III. At stake was a major section of the Virginia Central Railroad, the main rail link between the Shenandoah Valley—known as the breadbasket of the Confederacy—and General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The largest all-cavalry battle of the Civil War, Trevilians is also important for several other reasons. It not only illustrates the evolution of Civil War horse soldiers into mounted infantrymen but also marks Hampton’s emergence as a successful commander of Lee’s cavalry. Perhaps most important, the Confederate victory, because it safeguarded a critical Southern rail line, considerably prolonged the Civil War.

The Battle of Trevilian Station was fought in the third year of