July 11, 1864. |
July 12. |
July 18. |
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captured Washington and inflicted serious damage, but he could not have held the city.
But, as we have observed, he was so crippled by the fight, that, he did not move until noon the next day, and then he marched so carefully, that it was not until two days after the battle that he appeared in formidable force in front of the northeastern fortifications of Washington,1 in the vicinity of Fort Stevens.
By that time the safety of the city was assured, for during that day
the remainder of the Sixth Corps arrived there, and was speedily followed by the divisions of Dwight and Grover, of Emory's (Nineteenth) corps, which had just arrived at Fortress Monroe by sea, from New Orleans, and had been sent immediately up the Potomac to the Capital by Grant.
On the following day Early menaced Washington, when Augur sent out a strong reconnoitering party from Fort Stevens, to develop the strength of the Confederates.
A sharp skirmish ensued, in which each party lost almost three hundred men. Satisfied that the opportunity for seizing Washington was passed, and alarmed by information of the concentration of troops there, the Confederate leader began a retreat with his entire force, now reduced to fifteen thousand men. He crossed the Potomac at Edwards's Ferry that night
with a large amount of booty,2 and moved through Leesburgh and Snicker's Gap to the Shenandoah Valley. General Wright, of the Sixth Corps, to whom Grant had now assigned the command of all the troops at Washington available for operations in the field, pursued in the track of the fugitives.
His advance overtook them
at Snicker's Ferry, on the Shenandoah River. General Crook, with his cavalry, had struck them at Snicker's Gap the previous day. At the ferry
1 See map on page 24, volume II.
2 While the invaders were in Maryland, the cavalry, under Johnson, especially those under Gilmor, destroyed a vast amount of public and private property, and carried a great deal away with them. The railways, the telegraph lines, and the Chesapeake and Ohio canal were injured to the estimated aggregate value of over $600,000. The Baltimore and Ohio railway suffered to the amount of $400,000, and the other two, running north, to the amount of $100,000 each. The damages to fences and small farms was estimated at $250,000. The invasion cost Maryland, according to the report of the committee of the Legislature, $2,080,000. Among the private property wantonly destroyed were the dwellings of the then Governor of Maryland (Bradford) and Montgomery Blair, who had lately left the position of Postmaster-General.
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