Military Monday: The Belle of the Battles (Lucinda Dogan)

The Breckenridge News (Cloverport, KY)
27 September 1905

“THE BELLE OF THE BATTLES”

RELICS OF THE BATTLEFIELDS OF BULL RUN

Two Ancient Citizens Who Viewed the Slaughter and Cared for the Wounded – Both Still Living on the Battleground

“The Belle of the Battle” is a title—a sort of a nom de guerre—borne by a venerable woman who lives at Groveton, Prince William county, Virginia, a war-worn hamlet in that blood-soaked region wherein the first and second battles of Bull Run and scores of less sanguinary engagements were fought. Groveton is a hamlet of tragic memories. It is on the Warrenton turnpike five miles west of Centreville, three miles east of Gainesville, five miles north of Manassas and two miles south of Sudley. These were important names in the heroic age of the Republic.

Though the old lady was known to the men of the Federal armies of the Potomac and Virginia, and to the Confederate army of Northern Virginia, and is still known the country round as “The Belle of the Battles,” her name is Mrs. Lucinda Dogan. She is ninety years old, has an excellent memory, good teeth, does not wear eye-glasses and can walk miles at a stretch.

 Ninety Year Old Witnesses

August 28, 29 and 30 are the battle days of the Second Bull Run. August 30 was Mrs. Dogan’s ninetieth birthday. The forty-third anniversary of the defeat of Pope by Lee and Jackson will be celebrated on the field of Groveton, the centre of the opposing armies, by a reunion of veterans and a birthday celebration for the Belle of Battles. The two observances will be so interwoven that it would b heard to separate one from the other. Another feature of the observance will be that particular prominence will be given to an old-time colored man whose name is Jim Redmond. Redmond is also ninety years old.

Groveton is a group of three houses at a crossroad. Mrs. Dogan lives in one house, Redmond in another and the third is occupied by a tenant farmer of the Dogans. Both Mrs. Dogan and Jim Redmond saw the battles of Bull Run and looked upon the fields in all their gory horror. When the firing had ceased, Mrs. Dogan and her children, and Jim Redmond walked among the dead and wounded carrying buckets of water and “gourd” dippers, giving drink to the moaning soldiers, many of whom, of course, were dying. All the old folk in the battle region of Virginia say that the most horrible sound that comes from a battlefield is the chorus of cries for water that come from the wounded. After his labor as a volunteer water carrier, Redmond worked with a burial party digging the long, deep trenches in which the Confederate dead were laid.

Groveton is on high ground, but near the Dogan house is a hill from which a good view may be obtained of Henry Hill, the junction of the Warrenton pike and the Sudley road and the valley of Young’s Branch, all a mile to the east of Groveton and the real red fighting ground of that red Sunday, July 21, 1861. It was from this hill that Mrs. Dogan and Jim Redmond watched the first battle. It is interesting to let Mrs. Dogan tell the story of the fight in her own way.  She said: 

By an Eye Witness

“The Yankees were all around Centreville and our boys were laying along Bull Run. Some of our troops kept coming through Gainesville from the Valley.” (This was Johnston’s army which had slipped away from Patterson’s troops in the Shenandoah Valley and was re-inforcing Beauregard.) “Early Sunday morning we heard shooting down the pike towards the Stone Bridge, and my husband called out that the Yanks were coming. We went up to the top of that hill yonder and some of the neighbors also came up. We could see the smoke rising above the trees about the Stone Bridge.” (This was Tyler’s division of the Union army engaging Cocke and Evans’ brigades posted on the extreme Confederate left.)  “Off towards Sudley we could see clouds of dust rising over the woods.” (This was McDowell with the divisions of Hunter and Heintzelman executing the flank movement.) “After the shooting had been going on for half an hour we could see crowds of men running back from the Stone Bridge to the Sudley road and then going north towards Sudley. Southern troops were coming up from towards Manassas, marching across the Henry farm, then over Buck Hill and on towards Sudley.” (The Confederates had discovered the Union turning movement and were preparing to check it.) “Not long after all this, the shooting began between the pike and Sudley. We could hear the sharp cracking of the muskets and the loud reports of the cannon, and could hear men shouting. Not long after, the men who had marched towards Sudley came running back through the woods and over the fields, stopping to shoot now and then. More Confederates were coming from Manassas and were forming on Buck Hill and the Matthews farm.” (These were the brigades of Bee and Bartow of Johnston’s army fighting to stay the Federal advance.) “After fighting there for some time our boys ran back from Buck Hill over to the Henry place, and the Yankees after them. More men kept coming from towards Manassas.” (The whole of Beauregard and Johnston’s armies were taking position on the Henry farm.)

“Then the Yankees followed up Henry Hill. The shooting had got so furious now that we couldn’t hear any single musket, and the firing of the cannon was so fast that only once in a while could we pick out a single shot. The country down there was now so covered with dust and smoke that we couldn’t see the men, and though they were shouting we could not distinguish the shouting from the shooting. Now and then we could see lines of men running across the Chinn place, this side of the Henry farm, as though they were running to get into the smoke and dust and shooting. It was an awful sight. Every little while a cannon ball or shell would come over our way, but we were all too interested and excited to mind it. About four o’clock in the afternoon the noise was at its loudest, and we could see small bodies of men going back across the Matthews’ place and on towards Sudley. Then more went back that way, and finally the field got so full of them and they made such a dust running that we couldn’t see them. The shooting quieted down so we could hear single shots, and the dust in the Henry field got higher and thinner. We knew the Yankees were running. About six o’clock that evening my husband and I drove over to the Henry place. The old house was a heap of smoking ashes. My old friend Mrs. Judith Henry, who was sick in bed, had been killed that morning by a shell which broke through the house and burst in her bedroom. All the trees about the place had been shot down so that only the stumps were standing. Parties of Confederates were picking up dead men and burying them, but plenty of corpses were still lying around. We saw a great many wounded men, and many of them were begging for water. Dead horses were lying around everywhere, and the field, pretty well turned up by shells and was just littered with artillery wheels, muskets, bayonets, belts, caps, knapsacks and coats.”

 Warned of Second Battle

It was more than a year later, August 29, 1862, that Mrs. Dogan, after clearing up the breakfast dishes, was told by a staff officer of Stonewall Jackson to move off her farm, as there would be fighting there that day. There had been heavy fighting the day before around Gainesville, three miles down the pike, and the night before Jackson had taken up his position along the abandoned railroad bed from Gainesville to Sudley, and which passes about 800 yards back of the Dogan house, there to await the coming of Longstreet through Thoroughfare Gap and the approach of General Pope with the Union army from the direction of Manassas. Mrs. Dogan had not reached her father’s house, two miles away, when a Union battery and supports took station near the Dogan house and opened on Jackson’s line. All that an the next day there was fierce and bloody fighting around Groveton.

Of the conditions there she said: “Funeral parties of both armies were burying the dead, though they had not long been at this horrible work. The Confederates dug long, deep trenches and laid their men in the ground that way. The Union burial parties only shoveled mounds of dirt over the bodies where they lay, and two or three days later a heavy rain made the field hideous. When the children and I got home parties of men were collecting the wounded and putting them in rows here and in the yard and wherever there was shade. Doctors were cutting off legs and arms and the moaning was awful. They hadn’t brought in all the wounded. There were hundreds scattered all around the farms. The children and I took buckets of water out into the fields and we worked that way all day and into the night, doing what we could for the poor fellows. Most of the wounded on our farm were Yankees, but that didn’t make any difference to us after they got hurt. All our bed sheeting and table linen went for bandages.”

The Famous Moseby’s Men

Mrs. Dogan’s house was the rendezvous of Moseby’s “Rangers,” “scouts,” “bushwhackers,” “pirates,” variously called, many of whom are still living, scattered throughout Northern Virginia. The morning after Moseby took General Stoughton and staff, prisoners at Fairfax court house, the whole party ate breakfast at Mrs. Dogan’s. The old lady was a star witness in the Congressional inquiry into the Fitz-John Porter case. She testified that Longstreet and staff took breakfast with her on the morning of August 29 and that regiments of his corps were marching down the pike from Gainesville. This did much to establish Porter’s contention that when he and his division lay behind Dawkin’s branch on August 29 Longstreet’s whole corps was in front of him extending from Jackson’s right at Groveton.