Anniversary Reenactment---Ball's Bluff, Leesburg, Virginia: Re-enactors Stage Booming Battle At Ball's Bluff

Re-enactors Stage Booming Battle At Ball's Bluff, Leesburg Today, Saturday, October 22, 2011

Nearly 1,000 Civil War re-enactors and some 2,000 spectators converged on the Ball's Bluff battlefield near Leesburg Saturday to stage the largest ever re-enactment of the 1861 engagement. Warned to put their ear-plugs in and turn their hearing aids off, the crowd was treated to a thundering hour-long program that began with a skirmish between Confederate and Union units in the woods and ended with a surge of southern re-enforcements capturing many of the northern soldiers and driving the rest into the Potomac River.

The spectator area at times was surrounded by the sounds a gunfire as units advanced, retreated and flanked their foes. The frequent booms of Union howitzers, whose construction was commissioned to help mark the 150th anniversary of the battle, could be heard well beyond the confines of the regional park. Activities continued Sunday at Morven Park, where visitors toured encampments from 9-10:30 a.m. and viewed a re-enactment of the Battle of Dranesville at 11 a.m. At 12:30 p.m. a wreath-laying ceremony was held at the Baker Monument at Ball's Bluff Regional Park.

Text and Image Source: Leesburg Today
Text is slightly edited by CWL.