previous next

[159] picket about five miles from Hanover Court-House, which our advance drove in, as well as all their other pickets, to within three miles of Hanover Court-House, where they found the enemy were in such strong numbers that they halted, and returned to the regiment. This was reported to Gen. Porter, who concluded to send a force up, and capture them if possible.

On the morning of the twenty-seventh, we moved toward Hanover Court — House, on the right, to attract the enemy's attention, while Gen. Porter moved his force upon the left and rear, the success of which you of course know.

The regiment was under fire here, and all the officers and men behaved most gallantly. They followed up the retreat of the enemy, and captured eighty men and two commissioned officers, and also burned the bridge on the Pamunkey, to the rear of Hanover Court-House.

On the morning of the thirtieth, we were ordered to send three squadrons to make a reconnoissance toward Ashland, and burn the bridge over the railroad at that place, if the enemy were not too strong. We found several of their cavalry pickets, which we drove in before us. We captured eight men and horses belonging to the Fourth, and entered Ashland without any resistance, the enemy having left for Richmond the night before.

We burned the bridge here, as directed, and returned to our camp, where we found orders to move to New-Bridge, and join the reserve brigade of cavalry.

The ten days scout was a very hard one, during which time we had killed and maimed thirty-four horses. We did not lose any men.

Yours, most respectfully,

Richard H. Rush, Colonel Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry, Lancers.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)
hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Fitz-John Porter (2)
Richard H. Rush (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
30th (1)
27th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: