Ball's Bluff Battlefield

The Battle of Ball's Bluff, fought October 21, 1861, was a Union defeat in which many soldiers drowned trying to escape down the bluff into the Potomac and Colonel Edward Baker became the only sitting U.S. senator killed in battle. The park today holds Ball's Bluff National Cemetery, one of the smallest in the country, with 54 Union soldiers in a mass grave. Visitors tell of screams near the cemetery, phantom gunfire, low fog, a Union soldier seen before dawn and branches moving near an unknown Confederate's grave.