We may think of ten thousand horses, ten thousand fearless riders; the rattling fire of carbines, thundering of cannon; brigades charging upon the guns, flashing of sabres, cutting and slashing, horses and men going down in heaps; yells, curses, thick clouds of smoke and dust, charge and countercharge a Confederate battery captured and recaptured, again in the hands of the Union troops, again lost, a third time taken, a third time lost-men sabred at the guns, horses and men struggling and writhing; reinforcements of Confederates, the arrival of Rodes's division of infantry, the withdrawal of the Union troops unmolested by the Confederates; six hundred Union and as many more Confederates killed or wounded, three Union cannon the trophies of the Confederates. They were the guns of the Sixth New York Battery. Of the thirtysix men belonging to the battery twenty-one were either killed, wounded, or were missing. General Gregg reformed his troops on the ground where he had formed them for the attack, and returned across the river, Stuart making no attempt to harass him, for Buford was threatening him from the north-west, where the contest was renewed with great fury, while down towards Stevensburg a third conflict was going on between a portion of the Confederates and the Union cavalry under Duffie, which was soon over, Duffie being ordered to join General Gregg. With the setting of the sun the Union cavalry recrossed the Rappahannock, having accomplished their object-ascertaining the position of the Confederate forces; that a portion of the infantry was at Culpeper. They had done more than this-they had frustrated the plan of General Lee, the sending of Stuart to menace Washington in his northward movement. Far more than this, for the struggle around Fleetwood was the making of the Union cavalry, and the unmaking of the Confederate. Up to that hour the Union cavalry had been of little account as a distinct arm of the service; but now organized as a compact body, wielding its strength in solid mass, it became a formidable power, while the Confederate cavalry, from that hour, was on the wane. "The battle," said a Richmond paper, "narrowly missed being a great disaster to our arms. Our men were completely surprised, and were only saved by their own indomitable gallantry and courage. . . . The Yankees retired slowly, disputing every foot of ground."(") The Union troops were elated by what they had done, while the Confederates were astonished at the persistency, bravery, audacity, and hardihood of the Union cavalrymen. We shall see that in every cavalry engagement, from that hour to the close of the war, the Union cavalry maintained the prestige won in this engagement. In several histories of the war it is asserted that the attack of the Union cavalry at Brandy Station compelled General Lee to change all his plans; that he had intended to march along the eastern base of the Blue Ridge, while Stuart was to screen the movement by moving towards Washington; but I do not find any evidence that General Lee had marked out such a movement for his main army. General Ewell's troops were then on their way towards the valley of the Shenandoah. Before the Confederate army started from Culpeper, General Longstreet sent his trusted scout, Harrison, into the Union lines to see what General Hooker was doing. "Where shall I report to you?" the scout asked. "Find me wherever I am," was the reply. General Longstreet gave him some money-not Confederate money, but gold, and the scout disappeared. We shall see him by-and-by. The Union troops at Winchester, in the Shenandoah Valley, were in the department commanded by General Schenck, who was at Baltimore. He sent word to General Milroy at Winchester to send his supplies to Harper's Ferry. General Milroy replied that he could hold the place against any force that would probably attack him. He did not know that the whole Confederate army was moving in that direction. He said that there were Union people in Winchester, and that it would be cruel to abandon those who were looking to him for protection. General Schenck replied that he might remain, but must be ready to move at any moment. The War Department at Washington made the mistake of not letting Milroy know that the main body of the Confederate army was at Culpeper-a neglect which resulted in disaster. Milroy telegraphed on the evening of the 12th for specific orders, but before the orders were ready Ewell's cavalrymen had cut the wires. The next morning Rodes's division of Ewell's corps was at Berryville, east of Winchester, but the Union brigade there escaped to Harper's Ferry. Rodes went on to Martinsburg, north of Winchester, getting between Milroy and the Potomac, while the other divisions of Ewell advanced directly upon the town. Milroy was nearly surrounded. He spiked the guns in the forts on the hills west of the town, abandoned his wagon-trains, and at midnight succeeded in escaping with a portion of the troops; but all the sick in the hospital and nearly half of his command were taken prisoners. By staying a day too long the Union army lost more than two thousand men, besides the cannon and wagons. On Sunday evening, while Milroy was getting ready to escape, President Lincoln, in Washington, was sending this despatch to Hooker: "If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg and the tail of it on the plank road, between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be thin somewhere. Could you not beak him?" The President sent General Couch to Harrisburg and another officer to Pittsburg to make arrangements against invasion, and issued a proclamation calling out one hundred thousand militia from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland. Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, also issued a proclamation, informing the people of the State of the threatened invasion. On the 15th of June I reached Harrisburg. The city was a bedlam. A great crowd of people-excited men, women wringing their hands, and children crying, all with big bundles-were at the railroad-station, ready to jump into the cars to escape northward or eastward. Merchants were packing up their goods. There was a great pile of trunks and boxes. Teams loaded with furniture, beds, and clothing rumbled through the streets; wagons were crossing the bridge over the Susquehanna; farmers from the beautiful Cumberland Valley were hurrying their cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs in droves across the river. The banks were sending their money to Philadelphia and New York. The railroads were removing all their cars and engines; housewives secreting their silver spoons and candlesticks. The excitement was very wild when a long train of army-wagons came thundering across the long bridge driven by teamsters covered with dust-a portion of the train which Milroy had sent from Winchester-all hurrying as if the Confederates were close upon them. The next morning some of the militia began to arrive farmers and their sons, clerks from stores, in citizens' dress. was very laughable to see men wearing long linen coats-"dusters"-and "stove - pipe" hats, armed with old muskets, mounted as cavalrymen, riding pell-mell through the streets. Hundreds of men were at work throwing up intrenchments. Going from Harrisburg to Baltimore, I found another scene of excitement. General Schenck was in command. A great force of negroes were at work building breast works and barricades on the roads west of the city, using hogsheads of tobacco, filling barrels with earth, piling up old wag.ons, carts, and boxes; cutting down trees, and placing them in front of the breast works; planting heavy guns on the hills, to command all the ave nues of approach. Twenty-six months before, the Massachusetts troops had fought their way through Baltimore; but now the people were arming for the fight, and the negroes, as they threw up the yellow earth with their shovels and pounded it down upon the breast works with mallets, were singing, "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave; His soul is marching on." Only four years had passed since the execution of John Brown; but the nation, the great ideas underlying it, had moved on with a rapidity hardly paralleled in history. NOTES TO CHAPTER IX. (1) Richmond Examiner, May 21, 1863. (5) Idem., June 6, 1863. () Mason to Benjamin, March 31, 1863. (7) Slidell to Benjamin, June 18, 1863. (*) Idem., June 25, 1863. (°) Conversation between Author and Confederate soldiers. (10) Richmond Examiner, June 12, 1863. CHAPTER X. CONFEDERATE NORTHWARD MARCH. N the morning of June 16th Jenkins's brigade of Confederate cavalry advanced from the Potomac into Pennsylvania, through Greencastle, reaching Chambersburg at midnight. Confederate scouting parties went out in all directions collecting what cattle and horses they could find, also all the negroes, sending them into Virginia to be sold as slaves. The government of which Jefferson Davis was the head was to be established on African slavery-upon the idea that a negro was to be classed with horses and cattle, having a property value. It mattered not that the negroes of Pennsylvania were free; they were seized and sent South. It is not probable that General Jenkins, or any one else, was greatly enriched by the seizure; possibly few, if any, of the negroes were sold, for slave property in Virginia was rapidly diminishing in value; but the fact remains that the spirit of slavery, the fundamental idea underlying the Confederate Government, was displayed by these videttes of the Confederate army. Jenkins, having obtained a large amount of supplies, fell back to join Ewell, who was at Williamsport. A. P. Hill was marching from Fredericksburg to Culpeper; Longstreet advancing up the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge. On the Upper Potomac General Imboden, with a brigade of Confederate cavalry, was entering Cumberland and destroying the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to prevent General Kelley, who was in West Virginia with several thousand troops, from coming east. General Hooker could not determine what Lee intended to do. General Halleck, with all the telegraph wires running into his office in the War Department, could not make out whether Lee was intending to sweep down upon Baltimore or move towards Washington. The Union army was between the Bull Run Mountains and Washington-at Manassas, Centreville, Drainsville-covering Washington, ready to move across the Potomac the moment Lee's movements should indicate his line of advance. At Harper's Ferry, on Maryland Heights, in a position which Lee |