Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/141

Rh the march down the valley, with orders to move on to the railroad connecting Baltimore and Philadelphia, burn the bridges over the Gunpowder and Bush rivers and then report to him in the neighborhood of Washington, where he would be by the i4th. Gilmor accomplished the object of his expedition, burned the bridges, captured a passenger train on which was Major-General Franklin of the Federal army, who subsequently escaped during the night, and reported as per orders on the 14th, at Poolesville. Johnson, after burning the bridge at Cockeysville, turned round and rode rapidly around north of Baltimore. When five miles from that city, it was reported to him that the home of Governor Bradford, governor of Maryland, was only a short distance down the road. He at once detailed Lieutenant Blackstone, Company B, First Maryland cavalry, with a detail of a few men and written orders to burn the house, in retaliation for the burning of the home of Governor Letcher of Virginia by General Hunter at Lexington within the preceding thirty days. Such debts require prompt payment, and this was paid in thirty days without grace.

From Cockeysville he had dispatched a friend into Baltimore to find out the condition of the transportation on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, and he left two men at Hayfields, John Merryman's place, to bring him the report of his scout about midnight. He stopped at the Caves, the place of John Canon, Esq., about midnight, to feed. While there his couriers from Hayfields got up and reported that the Nineteenth corps, General Emory, had arrived in transports and was at Locust Point and was being landed on the trains of the Baltimore & Ohio and hurried to Washington. Johnson sent this information to Early by an officer and five men, with orders to ride at speed, seizing horses as fast as theirs gave out. Thence he rode across Montgomery and Howard counties to Beltsville on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad to Washington, where he struck a thousand Federal cavalry and drove them