A Narrow Escape

A Narrow Escape. Engagement at Kettle Run. In August 1862, Confederate Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson led his command around Union Gen. John Pope's right flank to cut Federal communication lines and pave the way for the rest of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to follow from the Rappahannock River. At sunset on August 26, Jackson occupied Bristoe Station on the Orange and Alexandria (O&A) Railroad just east of here to intercept and destroy Union supply trains headed to Alexandria. Jackson ordered Gen. Richard S. Ewell to destroy the O&A bridge over Kettle Run to slow Pope's advance from the south., Pope ordered Capt. Harman Bliss and the 72nd New York Infantry (3rd Excelsior) to board a train at Warrenton Junction and head toward Bristoe Station. Bliss stopped the train short of Kettle Run well before dawn the next morning and marched across to see flaming wreckage at the station. He withdrew across the run after some skirmishing and prepared to make a stand to save the bridge. When he saw a large force of Confederate advancing, however, he boarded his men as two shots from an artillery piece ricocheted near the locomotive and ordered the engineer to withdraw. Just then, Capt. G. Campbell Brown, Ewell's stepson and staff member, spurred his horse in pursuit. Brown fired three errant shots as Bliss and his men made good their escape to Warrenton Junction, where they arrived before 5 A.M. Ewell destroyed the bridge, which delayed Union troops and supplies and contributed to Pope's defeat at the Second Battle of Manassas., "I got alongside the Engine and order the Driver to halt, but he only went the faster. I fired at him three shots ... but had the mortification to see him get off unhurt." , , Capt. G. Campbell Brown