John Dimitry , A. M., Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 10.1, Louisiana
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[275] corps to drive from the Shenandoah valley the tardy Federal column that was to have cut off the army of Northern Virginia from the Southwest. The Louisiana brigades, under Zebulon York, former colonel of the Fourteenth, now promoted to brigadier-general, were in that brisk march down the valley, the driving of Sigel's force to Maryland heights, and the rapid and exhausting journey through Maryland under a July sun. They joyfully went with Early, they and Terry's Virginians the representatives of Stonewall Jackson's old division. They never marched more debonairly; never fought more gallantly —as Wallace found at the Monocacy. In that brilliant battle Col. W. R. Peck, of the Ninth, commanding Hays' brigade, earned by his ‘admirable conduct’ the praise of General Gordon. Among the killed and wounded Louisianians, for this last time left on the north of the Potomac, was Lieutenant-Colonel Hodges, Ninth regiment, severely wounded, and left in hospital at Frederick.

When Washington lay before them, like a jewel for the plucking, and Early called halt! at her very gates, a murmur of despair was heard among the veterans. Nor should we forget that, in the unmade attack of July 12, 1864, the Louisianians were too intelligent not to understand there had been, for once, lack of dash in that bold raider who when he was on the point of success had failed to achieve it. That was Early's single chance of making the one surely immortal stroke of the war. The immortality thus gained would have resembled a tent raised by the Arabian sorcerer—large enough to contain not only Early but every man in his army.

Returning across northern Virginia to the valley the Louisianians remained there to fight bravely but unavailingly against great odds in the famous battles of Winchester, September 19th; Fisher's Hill, September 22d, and Cedar Creek, October 9th. At Winchester General York lost an arm, and was succeeded in command by Col. Eugene Waggaman, whom we know as an officer of peculiar