ABSTRACT
For on the afternoon of October 21, 1861, Union forces fighting in Virginia found themselves, between a rock and a hard place. The Union's almost inevitable defeat that afternoon quickly turned into disaster. The men, and one of them was Oliver Wendell Holmes, scrambled, stumbled, or were carried back over the bluff they had struggled up only hours before. Some fell and died instantly on the treacherous rocks below, others drowned attempting to reach the safety of the Maryland shore, and many succumbed to the steady stream of gunfire that rained down on them from the bluff above as they fled. The enthusiasm expressed by many Northerners in 1861, was, in the words of Holmes' fellow soldier Elisha Hunt Rhodes, all for the Union. This enthusiasm was shared by those closest to Holmes. The Battle of Ball's Bluff was a relatively minor engagement in the American Civil War, but it was a microcosm of the longer war to come.
