Back in the Day: Burke Station Raid

Perhaps the most famous and historically significant event in Burke history is the Burke Station Raid (sometimes called "Burke's Station Raid"), which occurred on the night of December 28, 1862, in what is now the Burke Village shopping center.

Shortly after the Confederate victory at Fredericksburg in early December 1862, both the Union and Confederate armies remained in place along the Rappahannock. Confederate cavalry commander James Ewall Brown "J.E.B." Stuart detached from the main body of Confederate forces and moved north towards Fairfax County, skirmishing with Union troops at Dumfries and Occoquan and seizing Union war material on December 27. Sending a small detail south with prisoners and booty from Occoquan and Telegraph Road, the Confederates then advanced north on the 28th . The Rebels clashed with Union cavalry a number of times around the Occoquan River in southern Fairfax County throughout the day. After breaking off the skirmishes with the U.S. cavalry, Stuart advanced through the night to Burke Station.

By this point the Union army was aware that a substantial body of Confederate cavalry were behind their lines and assumed their target was the large depot at Fairfax Station. Accordingly, troops were rushed to Fairfax Station and Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton sent out cavalry patrols throughout the area. Orders were given to send all wagon trains and supplies to Fairfax Station for protection, including those at Burke Station.

With the station essentially undefended, Stuart had a handful of picked men creep in on foot and seize the Union telegraph operator before he could report the presence of the raiders. Stuart's own operator was able to intercept a number of Union communications as the troopers tore up the railroad tracks. A party of men was sent out to destroy the railroad bridge over Accotink Creek (the original bridge is submerged beneath Lake Accotink). The Confederates set it on fire, but Union officers later reported that little damage was done. Thanks to General Stoughton's action of withdrawing all supply wagons to Fairfax Station, it appears little was captured at Burke Station.

Then came the act of bravado that would make the Burke Station Raid go down in history:  Stuart had his telegraph operator wire General M.C. Meigs, Quartermaster-General of the U.S. Army, complaining about the poor quality of the mules he had captured, which impeded his ability to move captured Union wagons. While the original document has been lost, a contemporary Confederate recorded the telegram as reading, "Gen. Meigs will in the future please furnish  better mules; those you have furnished recently are very inferior."

After his troops had torn up a section of the tracks Stuart  moved north to Little River Turnpike and advanced on Fairfax Courthouse, as Fairfax City was then known. Fairfax Courthouse was aware of the Confederate raid and it was well defended. Stuart realized there was  little else he could to hamper the Union war effort and thousands of Union troops were moving to encircle him. He made his way west and south, breaking through the cordon of Union troops at Frying Pan and then moving on to Warrenton before taking up a position at Culpepper, on the left flank of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

The original Burke Station building, constructed in 1857, is still standing across from the Burke post office. It is presently owned by State Farm agent Rudy Shield and houses his office and E.C.'s Closet, a clothing shop. The tracks of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, now owned by Norfolk Southern Railroad (along which travel VRE and Amtrak trains), have moved somewhat to their present location behind the Burke Village shops. At the time of the Civil War they would have run through the middle of Burke Village and right outside the old train station.  

Sources

Freeman, Douglas Southall.  Lee's Lieutenants:  A Study in Command, Volume II.  New York:  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971.

Jones, John B.  A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, Volume I.  Time-Life Books, 1982.

McDonald, John W.  "Stuart's Burke Station Raid—26-31 December, 1862."  Fairfax County Historical Society, Volume 4 (1955), pp 66-71.

United States War Department.  The War of Rebellion:  A compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume XXI.  Washington:  Government Printing Office, 1880.

Wert, Jeffry D.  Cavalryman of the Lost Cause:  A Biography of J.E.B. Stuart.  New York:  Simon and Schuster, 2008.