George H. Gordon, From Brook Farm to Cedar Mountain

When General McClellan's order of movement and strong appeal to his army appeared, I learned of the disposition to be made of our corps. Again the destiny of the Second Regiment gave it a new brigade commander; one that shared with it all the eventful scenes, with the attendant joys and sorrows, that so largely entered into the year of 1862. We were to be no more to General Abercrombie. General Hamilton was, by order of General McClellan, transferred to another corps in his army, and my regiment sent to the brigade lately commanded by Hamilton. As senior colonel, I thus became the commander of a brigade which, then for the first time united, remained unbroken during the remainder of the war,--a brigade with a common history and a common glory.

When the achievements of any portion of that organization are told, deeds are declared in whose fame all share. The Second Massachusetts, the Third Wisconsin, and the Twenty-seventh Indiana regiments made up, substantially, the brigade that fell to my command.

From Winchester, on the fifteenth of March, General Sedgwick, with his division, was transferred to another corps in the Army of the Potomac.

In the second movement, of which the advance upon Winchester was the first in McClellan's plans, Williams's division of the Fifth Corps was ordered to proceed, via Berryville, through Snicker's Gap to Centreville, while Shields, with his division of about six thousand men, was to remain at Winchester. Williams's division of three brigades moved very early in the morning of the 22d for its destination. At night my brigade encamped at Berryville, and the next night at Snicker's Gap. Ignorant of the events transpiring in the rear, I was awakened