Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/133

Rh of his dispatch at Yellow Tavern, had taken one hundred men and gone off to find him. He had crossed the Pamunkey at Dabney's Perry by swimming his horses and carrying his men and ammunition over in the sunken ferry boat, which he had found and raised, and was making his way back to the Union lines when he was killed in King and Queen county, the very night after the day the other part of his command cut its way through the Marylanders and escaped to Kilpatrick.

After this little episode the Marylanders stuck to Kilpatrick until he reached the railroad at Tunstall's Station, where he was received by an escort sent up for him by Major-General Butler from Fortress Monroe. General Hampton reported that the exploits of the Maryland Line had saved Richmond, for, he said, Kilpatrick would certainly have ridden into Richmond if Colonel Johnson's attack in his rear had not paralyzed and delayed him so much that an infantry division could be brought up from the lines and set out to confront him. He complimented Colonel Johnson by presenting him with a saber, the only other patterns of which were borne by Lieutenant-General Hampton and President Jefferson Davis. Major-General Elzey, commanding the district of Richmond, reported that Colonel Johnson and his command, the Maryland Line, had saved the city of Richmond, and issued a general order complimenting him and them.

On the 9th of May, 1864, Maj.-Gen. Phil. Sheridan passed by the right flank of the army of Northern Virginia. Colonel Johnson was absent from the headquarters of the Maryland Line at the Junction, on a scout down the peninsula, leaving Colonel Brown in command. In the afternoon Colonel Brown had information of the Federal movement and proceeded promptly to put himself in front of it, and before Richmond, with one hundred and fifty sabers. He came in contact with the enemy at about eleven o'clock that night about a mile from Beaver Dam Station on the Virginia Central railroad, now the