Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/139

Rh day's fight drove him away. Johnson's cavalry brigade consisted of 800 mounted men, one four-gun battery, and a number of dismounted men who had lost their horses in the preceding thirty days, fighting Hunter, and were now following their command to take the chances of a horse turning up. Like the Welshman, if somebody would furnish them with a bridle, they would find a horse. From Leetown Johnson crossed the Potomac at Shepherdstown, passed rapidly through Sharpsburg to Boonsboro, on the 4th of July, leaving a large infantry force on Maryland Heights on his right and rear, depending on Early's infantry to take care of them. From Boonsboro he pressed down the National road through Middletown on Frederick. At Middletown he ran into a regiment of Federal cavalry, the Eighth Illinois, and Alexander's Maryland battery. Pushing them back and over the mountain, he drove them to the suburbs of Frederick, where he found a large force of infantry deployed in front of the town. He sent Lieutenant-Colonel Dunn with his Virginia regiment over to the Harper's Ferry road, while he proposed to move by the reservoir road into the opposite end of the town. Frederick was his native place and he was hourly informed of the condition of things and the troops defending the place. He was convinced that a simultaneous charge by Colonel Dunn at one end and by himself at the other would result in the capture of the town and all the troops in it. It was crammed with a wagon train escaping from Harper's Ferry, whence Gordon, of Early's command, had driven them.

Just as he got in motion for this attack, Maj.-Gen. Robert Ransom, commanding Early's cavalry, came up, and being informed of what was proposed, countermanded it and ordered Johnson back to the mountain at Hagan's on the top of it. He said that General Johnson was too enthusiastic and sanguine to get home, and that he would be cut to pieces. That night General Early