A. J. Bennett, private , First Massachusetts Light Battery, The story of the First Massachusetts Light Battery , attached to the Sixth Army Corps : glance at events in the armies of the Potomac and Shenandoah, from the summer of 1861 to the autumn of 1864.

[118] and over the site of the village of log huts where we tarried two days in the spring of 1862, when we came out with Gen. McDowell, previous to the organization of the Sixth Corps; crossed Broad Run at a point near where we had bivouacked in storm and sleet, fifteen months ago, and took position at Bristow Station, facing to the west. Here where the railroad embankment on the plain made an effective defensive field work, lay, four days, the infantry and artillery of our division. The cavalry vedettes of this section ranged along a line drawn through points perhaps three miles to the south and west of our position, and between it and our outposts was the infantry picket line. Cavalry was actively scouring the region in our front and on our left flanks. In the meanwhile Ewell, on the 21st, had invaded the narrow portion of Maryland north of Williamsport; a few hours' march will take his division into Pennsylvania. On the 22d a large part of the force yet in the valley move rapidly after Ewell toward Williamsport. These are now known to have been the troops of Longstreet and Hill; they cross upon the 24th and 25th. Now the Federal columns are moving toward the crossing at Edwards' Ferry. The Sixth Corps reaches the vicinity of the ferry, the evening of the 26th. A large part of the army and the general commanding are already in Maryland. We cross on the 27th, and on this day Gen. Hooker was in Frederick.

To arrive at an approximate notion of the relative situation and strength of the two armies at this moment, let the reader picture in his mind the map of western Maryland and Pennsylvania, or spread before his eye an actual map of that region. Find Chambersburg in Cumberland Valley; Lee, with Longstreet and Hill, had reached this place about the same time that Hooker came into Frederick. Early was thirty miles east and Ewell about thirty miles west of the main body of their army. Taking Frederick as a centre, the Federal corps lay east, south, and northeast, all within twenty miles of that town, except that a considerable cavalry force, commanded by Gen. Buford, which had been following the track of Lee, was yet in Cumberland Valley over the mountains from Frederick.

According to the estimate of Gen. Humphreys, Lee had at this moment 85,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry, and a due proportion of artillery, though De Peyster says ‘this is a low estimate,’ and that