Tompkins rides into Fairfax before dawn; a Confederate captain is dead in a clover field

Six weeks after Fort Sumter, the war had yet to produce a single death in ground combat. That ended in the pre-dawn darkness of June 1, 1861, when Lieutenant Charles H. Tompkins led between 50 and 86 Union cavalrymen out of Camp Union in Falls Church, Virginia, on a reconnaissance toward the village of Fairfax Court House — 13.5 miles from Washington. They surprised a small Confederate force, took prisoners, and in the chaos of a moonless night, Captain John Q. Marr of the Warrenton Rifles fell dead in a clover field — the first Confederate combat casualty of the war. The Union troopers were eventually driven out by a combination of infantry volleys, wounded civilians firing from buildings, and the improvised command of a 64-year-old ex-governor with a rifle…