The battles of Ball’s Bluff and Edwards Ferry had been over for almost four months when the whole 13th regiment was assigned to help construct a new protective earthwork near Leesburg.
On Feb. 15th, Hill recorded in his diary: “Snowing fast all day. Our Regiment worked all day on Fort Beauregard, 2 miles east of Leesburg. Cannonading heard from the direction of Centerville.”
The fort, according to independent historian Craig Swain of Leesburg, was actually due south of the town. No engineer drawings have ever been found, but it is believed to have been in the shape of a rectangle. It was on the hilltop in Swain’s photo, above the white buildings (an outlet mall) in the middle distance. Its cannon would have covered the Alexandria-Leesburg turnpike.
The fort (from which no fighting apparently was done) was obliterated years ago to make room for a gated subdivision appropriately named Beauregard Estates.
Hill said the 13th, apparently taking turns with the other regiments at Leesburg until the fort was finished, returned to work on it on the 18th and again on the 23rd.
13TH MISSISSIPPI INFANTRY REGIMENT 
Greetings from Leesburg (Loudoun Co.) Virginia. As a member of our county’s Sesquicentennial Committee I thought that you might like to know a couple of things that are going on here. First, every Memorial Day, our local SCV Camp # 21 (named after Clinton Hatcher who was killed at Ball’s Bluff) decorates the mass grave for 131 members of the 13th, 17th, 18th & 21st Mississippi Regiments are buried. Second, the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority has a re-enactment of the Battle of Ball’s Bluff on October 22nd of this year. Regards, Stephen Price
Thanks for the comment, Stephen.
According to H. Grady Howell, Jr.’s muster listing of Barksdale’s Brigade, there was a Private Edward Hatcher of the Benton Rifles, Eighteenth Miss. Regiment. He does not list a Clinton Hatcher.
I wasn’t aware there was a mass grave for the Mississippians near Leesburg. Where is it located?