The North: Union Leaders at Ball's Bluff

The North: Union Leaders at Ball's Bluff. . , Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone , The overall Union commander at Ball's Bluff, Brigadier General Stone was a rising star in the Union army at the time of the battle. After the battle, he became the scapegoat for the defeat. Stone was born September 30, 1824, in Greenfield, Massachusetts. An 1845 West Point graduate, he won two brevet promotions for gallantry in Mexico. Early in 1861, he organized the defenses of Washington and oversaw the security arrangements for President-elect Lincoln's inauguration. Arrested on February 8, 1862, Stone was incarcerated for six months with no charges ever filed against him. Released in August, he eventually served on the staff of Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks in Louisiana. Typhoid and he cloud of Ball's Bluff resulted in his resignation from the army in September, 1864. Stone later served 13 years as Chief of Staff to the Khedive of Egypt and, after that, as Chief Engineer on the Statue of Liberty project. He died in New York on January 24, 1887, and is buried at West Point.

Senator/Colonel Edward Dickinson Baker , Born in England on February 24, 1811, Baker was brought to America by his parents in 1815 and settled in Philadelphia. About 1827, the family moved to Illinois. By the mid-1830s, Baker was practicing law in Springfield, Illinois, where he and another young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln became close friends. Baker served two terms in Congress and briefly but creditably commanded the 4th Illinois infantry in Mexico before moving to California where he spent the 1850s. Moving to Oregon in 1859, Baker was elected to the US Senate from that state and found himself in Washington at the outbreak of the Civil War. Wanting to symbolically tie the west coast states to the Union, Baker helped organize the 1st California Regiment (recruited mostly in Philadelphia and later renamed the 71st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment), which fought here at Ball's Bluff. Killed at this battle (though most likely not where his stone marker is located), Baker is the only US Senator ever to die in combat. He is buried at the Presidio in San Francisco.

Colonel William R. Lee , Lee was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on August 15, 1807. An 1825 graduate of Norwich Military Academy, he entered West Point that same year but resigned for personal reasons a few weeks before his scheduled 1829 graduation. As an engineer and superintendent on several northeastern railroads during the 1850s, Lee is credited with the ideas of burning coal in locomotives instead of wood and of stringing telegraph wires along railroad rights-of-way. In command of the 20th Massachusetts Regiment at Ball's Bluff, Lee was captured while attempting to escape after the Union defeat and remained in Confederate custody until his parole the following February. Ill health plagued him and, though he was with his regiment sporadically through 1862, he resigned in December and spent the rest of the war in Boston at Chief Engineer of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. Lee died in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1891.

Colonel Milton Cogswell , The only professional soldier among the Federal commanders at Ball's Bluff, Milton Cogswell was born in Indiana in 1825 or 1826 and graduated from West Point in 1849. Cogswell spent most of the pre-war years with the 8th U.S. Infantry REgiment at various western posts. In the summer of 1861 he accepted a volunteer commission as colonel of the 42nd New York Infantry Regiment, which he led at Ball's Bluff. Captured late in the day of the battle, he was paroled in March, 1862. He returned to the 8th U.S. Infantry in 1863, remaining with that unit through the war. In 1869, Cogswell took a detachment of the 21st U.S. Infantry by the rail of Charleston, S.C. to Promontory Point, Utah where he witnessed the driving of the golden spike that completed the transcontinental railroad. Continuing to California, he thus led the first party to travel coast to coast by rail. Cogswell retired in 1871 and died in Washington, D.C. in November, 1882.

Colonel Charles Devens , Born April 4, 1820, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, Devens was a Harvard lawyer, a state senator, and a US Marshal before the Civil War. He commanded the 15th Massachusetts Regiment at Ball's Bluff, his men being the first Union troops in the field. Promoted to Brigadier General in April 1862, Devens is probably best known as the commander of the XI Corps division that was surprised and destroyed by Stonewall Jackson's flank attack at Chancellorsville. Transferred several times, he finished the war as military commander of Charleston, S.C. Returning to the law, Devens became a judge, serving 1873-77 and 1881-91 on the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. From 1877-81, he was the US Attorney General under President Rutherford B. Hayes. Fort Devens, Massachusetts is named for him. He died in Boston in 1891.

Captain William Francis Bartlett , A junior at Harvard in 1861, William Francis Bartlett was known to sympathize with the South before the war. Following Ft. Sumter, however, he joined the 20th Massachusetts Regiment, becoming captain of Company I. He crossed his company to Ball's Bluff before dawn on October 21 and was among the last to leave, re-crossing the Potomac after dark about a mile upriver at the head of a mixed group of some 80 men. In accomplishing this, Bartlett found and repaired a small skiff that he used to shuttle the men across four or five at a time, while holding the rest at bay with a pistol when some of them tried to rush the boat. Bartlett got them all across safely, the largest group of Federals to escape. Bartlett lost a leg at Yorktown and the use of an arm at Port Hudson. He was captured at the Crater during the siege of Petersburg in 1864, but returned to service and survived the war. He was promoted to Brigadier General in 1863 and to Brevet Major General in 1865. He died in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1876.

Lieutenant Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. , Holmes has correctly been called "the most famous survivor of Ball's Bluff." Born March 8, 1841, he graduated from Harvard in 1861 and joined the 20th Massachusetts Regiment, becoming a lieutenant in Company A. Holmes was wounded twice at Ball's Bluff; once merely having the wind knocked out of him by a spent ball, then later being hit in the chest. He was wounded twice more at Antietam and at Second Fredericksburg. Following the war, Holmes enjoyed a successful law career and is best known as "The Great Dissenter" for his 30 years, 1902-32, as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.