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[15] at an early hour. The right bank was lined with the enemy's sharpshooters. Lieutenant S. A. Brown, with a platoon of mounted men of the First Rhode Island, rushes into the river under the fire of the Confederates, arrives in their midst, takes twenty-five prisoners, disperses the rest, and opens a passage for the division.1 The Southern cavalry, thus taken by surprise, got back as well as they could to their horses, which they had had the imprudence to leave at too great a distance from them, and then hastened to carry the news of the approach of the Unionists to Fitzhugh Lee. This general had been informed of their march the day previous. A despatch from Lee's Headquarters had apprised him of Averell's departure, while his scouts, keeping a vigilant watch over all the movements of the enemy, had informed him of his departure from Morrisville. He had been under the false impression that by reinforcing the post at Kelly's Ford, the only practicable ford for a considerable distance along the river, he might be able to hold them in check for some time. At the first news of the crossing he hastened with his brigade to meet the enemy. Stuart, who happened to be at Culpeper, joined him as a volunteer, without taking command of the troops. The Federals had lost much time in the passage of the ford, which was covered by more than four feet of water: they advanced cautiously and as slowly as a troop of infantry, the skirmishers having landed in order to scour the woods. Accordingly, they were yet at a distance of about a mile and one-third from Kelly's Ford when they found themselves facing Lee's brigade, which had arrived in haste, followed by a battery of artillery commanded by the young and valiant Pelham. Averell's dismounted men occupied the edge of a wood, strongly intrenched behind a stone wall; beyond this wood lay a quantity of fallow lands which separated them from the heads of the Confederate columns. Lee, believing that he had only an advance-guard to deal with, hurls upon them a squadron on foot as skirmishers, which, notwithstanding Stuart's efforts, is instantly driven back in disorder and out of the clearing by the well-sustained fire of the Federals. The latter have deployed themselves, McIntosh on the right, Duffie on the left, and Reno in the centre, with the
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1883.
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