aining hard and so dark that we were compelled to use lanterns to
remove the dead and dying out of our way, fearing our horses would
crush them under their feet. The moans of the dying were horrible.
Sometimes I imagine I can still hear their voices ringing in my ears.
It was awful!
Then commenced the race after Lee's defeated army. For a few days we
had with us "Beau" Neill's brigade of the Sixth Corps, but on July 12
we cut loose from them, marched to Boonsborough, where we rejoined
General Gregg and one of the other brigades of our division, and,
pushing rapidly to Harper's Ferry, crossed over the Potomac on the
14th, with our head-quarters' band playing "I wish I was in Dixie."
Next day the two brigades moved out to Shepherdstown and encountered
the rebel cavalry again, fighting dismounted behind stone walls and
fences all day. An officer of the signal corps sent us a report that
all of Lee's army had crossed over to our side of the river and that we
were being surrounded by the enemy. Consequently, when night came, we
made a hasty retreat to Harper's Ferry. A singular thing about this
fight was that while we did not claim any victory, and left all our
killed and wounded behind in charge of our surgeons, when the latter
rejoined us a few days afterwards they told us that the rebels had
commenced their retreat even before we did, also leaving their killed
and wounded in charge of their surgeons. That, it is believed, was the
only drawn fight the cavalry of both armies ever had--where each
abandoned the field to the other--during the four years' contest.
Our line of march southward was over the same ground as that traversed
by McClellan in 1862 after Antietam. Nothing much of note occurred. We
did not get a fair chance at the rebel cavalry again until we arrived,
on September 13, in the neighborhood of Culpeper Court-House. Here
Gregg made a mounted attack, driving the rebel cavalry fifteen miles.
While we of the staff were placing the regiments in position for this
mounted charge I was ordered to find a cover for the Sixth Ohio
Cavalry, and took them into a heavy piece of oak timber near the edge
of the open country. While I was reporting to General Gregg how our
lines were formed he observed the Sixth Ohio breaking and coming back
through the woods in great disorder. He at once ordered me to stop and
re-form them, but I soon became demoralized myself when I felt the
belligerent end of a hornet upon my cheek. The
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