The Battle of Aquia Creek was an exchange of cannon fire between Union Navy gunboats and Confederate shore batteries on the Potomac River at its confluence with Aquia Creek in Stafford County, Virginia. The battle took place from May 29, 1861 to June 1, 1861 during the early days of the American Civil War. The Confederates set up several shore batteries to block Union military and commercial vessels from moving in the Chesapeake Bay and along the lower Potomac River as well as for defensive purposes. The battery at Aquia also was intended to protect the railroad terminal at that location. The Union forces sought to destroy or remove these batteries as part of the effort to blockade Confederate States coastal and Chesapeake Bay ports. The battle was tactically inconclusive. Each side inflicted little damage and no serious casualties on the other. The Union vessels were unable to dislodge the Confederates from their positions or to inflict serious casualties on their garrisons or serious damage to their batteries. The Confederates manning the batteries were unable to inflict serious casualties on the Union sailors or cause serious damage to the Union vessels. Soon after the battle, on Sunday, July 7, 1861, the Confederates first used naval mines, unsuccessfully, off the Aquia Landing batteries. The Confederates ultimately abandoned the batteries on March 9, 1862 as they moved forces to meet the threat created by the Union Army's Peninsula Campaign. The U. S. National Park Service includes this engagement in its list of 384 principal battles of the American Civil War.
Background
Although providing for a referendum on May 23, 1861, the Virginia state convention voted for and effectively accomplished the secession of that state from the Union on April 17, 1861, three days after the surrender of Fort Sumter to Confederate forces and two days after President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion. On April 22, 1861, Governor John Letcher of Virginia gave Robert E. Lee command of Virginia State forces with the rank of major general. General Lee dispatched Captain William F. Lynch of the Virginia state navy to examine the defensible points on the Potomac River, and to take measures for the establishment of batteries to prevent Union vessels from navigating that river. On April 24, 1861, Major Thomas H. Williamson of the Virginia Army engineers and Lieut. H. H. Lewis of the Virginia Navy examined the ground at Aquia Creek, and selected Split Rock Bluff as the best point for a battery, as the channel there could be commanded from that point by guns of sufficient caliber.
On April 27, 1861, President Lincoln ordered the Union blockade of the Confederacy extended to the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina since those states were already in the process of joining the Confederate States of America. Both the Union and Confederacy then wanted to deny use of the Potomac River to the other side.
On May 8, 1861, Major Williamson began construction on fortifications at the Aquia Creek landing, mainly to protect the terminus of the Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, which had its northern terminus at the landing, from seizure by Union Army forces. About May 14, 1861, Captain Lynch and Lieutenant Lewis, along with Commander Robert D. Thorburn and Lieutenant John Wilkinson of the Virginia State Navy, had erected at Aquia a battery of thirteen guns to protect the railroad terminal. On May 10, 1861, Confederate authorities appointed General Lee to command Confederate troops in Virginia. Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles assumed overall command of the batteries although they remained under the immediate command of Captain Lynch at Aquia.
The Confederate battery at Aquia Landing was first spotted by the USS Mount Vernon on May 14, 1861, but the Mount Vernon made no attack on the position. the of the Federal Potomac Flotilla under the command of Commander James H. Ward Confederate Captain Lynch reported that the Thomas Freeborn fired 14 shots and only wounded one man in the hand. The largest guns of the squadron were 32-pounders. Captain Lynch reported no deaths or injuries from the second and third days of shelling, only the death of a chicken and a horse. Lynch added that his works sustained some damage, houses in the rear were "knocked about" and the railroad was torn up in three or four places. Nonetheless, during the fight both the Thomas Freeborn and the Pawnee took minor damage from the batteries and required repairs.
Following the battle of Aquia Creek, the Confederates reinforced their defenses in the area by constructing a third battery on the bluff at Aquia and a fourth across the mouth of Aquia Creek at Brent Point. The mines were later removed from the river by sailors from the Resolute, although one of the mines actually sank into the river. The Union Army used the wharves and storage building at Aquia Landing until June 7, 1863 when the army headed north for the Battle of Gettysburg. The Union Army used the facilities again in 1864 during the Overland Campaign.