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to Belle Isle, Virginia.
A detailed account of their experience will be found in the Appendix.
Monday morning, the 20th, we continued our line of march, passing through Snickersville, near Snicker's Gap, Bloomfield, and Paris, all small villages, and camped at Upperville near Ashby's Gap, where we remained until the afternoon of the 22d, leaving at 5 o'clock, the right and centre sections advancing about six miles and camping at Piedmont.
The left section having been detailed as rear guard to the supply train, was on the road all night in that capacity, and the next morning made a rapid march of twelve miles to rejoin the Battery.
We overtook it at mid-day pushing on into Manassas Gap.
We met a body of cavalry and flying artillery coming out of the gap. They had been holding it until the army arrived.
We were immediately ordered into position on one of a series of eminences known as Wapping Heights, commanding the road through the Pass.
It was thought Lee intended to get possession of these heights, and a battle was momentarily expected.1 But no sooner were our guns in position than, wearied with the march of the last twenty hours, many of the men fell down beside them and slept soundly.
At sundown we began to
Gen. Meade crossed the Potomac . . . on the 18th, . . . moving to Warrenton. This movement being in advance of Lee, who halted for some days near Bunker Hill and made a feint of recrossing the Potomac, Meade was enabled to seize all the passes through the Blue Ridge north of the Rappahannock, barring the enemy's egress from the Shenandoah save by a tedious flank march.
Meade, misled by his scouts, had expected to fight a battle in Manassas Gap—or rather on the west side of it—where our cavalry under Buford found the enemy in force; when the 3d Corps was sent in haste from Ashby's Gap to Buford's support, and its 1st division, Gen. Hobart Ward, pushed through the Gap, and the Excelsior brigade, Gen. F. B. Spinola, made three heroic charges up as many steep and difficult ridges dislodging and driving the enemy with mutual loss,—Gen. Spinola being twice wounded. . . . Next morning, our soldiers pushed forward to Front Royal, but encountered no enemy. Unknown to us, the Excelsiors had been fighting a brigade of Ewell's men who were holding the Gap, while Rhodes' division, forming the rear guard of Lee's army, marched past up the valley, and had, of course, followed on its footsteps during the night. No enemy remained to fight; but two days were lost by Meade getting into and out of the Gap; during which Lee moved rapidly southward, passing around our right flank, and appearing in our front when our army again looked across the Rappahannock.American conflict, Vol. 2.
The Arakelyan press, Boston, 1909.
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