...arly, was posted (with artillery) near the fords. As proximate but separate commands, stood General Theo. Holmes, thirty miles off to the right, with a brigade, a battery, and cavalry, at and about Acquia Creek , and General J. E. Johnston, sixty miles away, over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Holmes's should have been an outpost, but he had ranked Beauregard in the old service, and as a point of etiquette was ...