Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/85

Rh the windows and the streets, crying and screaming in ecstasy, and the Marylanders were the first at the Taylor House. They had policed the town, seized the warehouses and magazines of supplies and put guards over them before others got up, so that when Ewell's commissary came up, an immense quantity of everything useful to an army was turned over to him intact, except of course some things retained by the Marylanders, who were entitled to salvage and took it! Lieut.-Col. Edwin R. Dorsey was wounded as he charged singly and alone a squad of Union soldiers in a side street. He was the only man of the command hit during the day.

The Marylanders went into camp four miles north of the town on the valley pike, and next day, the 26th, marched into Martinsburg. There they were engaged for two or three days collecting stores left by Banks, and then rejoined the main army near Charlestown. While there General Steuart with the First Maryland and two batteries drove the enemy from Bolivar Heights, which he occupied, but evacuated after a few hours and went into camp at Halltown. The next morning at daylight the army took the retrograde. Gen. Charles S. Winder, the Marylander, had been sent to the other side of the Shenandoah to take Loudoun Heights and demonstrate from there on Harper's Ferry, which he did. Everything was done to make the enemy understand that the Confederates proposed crossing the Potomac at Harper's Ferry, and moving down in the rear to take Washington. When Winder recrossed to join the army, then in retreat, he found the First Maryland alone just moving out of camp, having received no order of march. It had no brigade. Winder at once directed Colonel Johnson to report to him and gave him the position of honor, the rear guard, and thus they moved up the valley—the Stonewall brigade the rear guard of the army, the First Maryland the rear guard of the Stonewall brigade.