Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/93

Rh commanded by Trimble and the left by Steuart, and Elzey selected the line on which the battle was to be fought. The Marylanders, therefore, always claimed Cross Keys as a Maryland battle and a Maryland triumph.

But while Fremont's guns were thundering at Cross Keys, Shields was plunging up the other side of the river to strike Jackson's rear and drive him back on Fremont. He got there twelve hours too late. Jackson's troops slept in line on the night of the 8th, but next morning before the sun was up they were over the river in Shields' front, and made right at his throat. The Marylanders, after their hand-to-hand fight on the evening of the 6th, had not had half rations during the next day, for they had to bury their dead at Cross Keys church. On the 8th they "had not a mouthful, for their wagons had been sent off. On crossing the river by sunrise of the 9th Colonel Johnson gained Ewell's permission to stop and get something to eat. The fire of the Louisianians at Port Republic, two miles off, abbreviated their breakfast and they pushed on to the fight. They got there only in time to act as reserve to their old comrades, the Stonewall brigade, but enjoyed none of the joys of the charge, as the Louisianians had done, and none of the glory which the gallant soldiers of Dick Taylor and their general had gathered in such abundance. Ewell decorated the First Maryland by a general order and honored them in his report, as follows: "Headquarters, Third Division.

General Order No. 30.

In commemoration of the gallant conduct of the First Maryland regiment, on the 6th of June, when, led by Col. Bradley T. Johnson, they drove back with loss the Pennsylvania Bucktail rifles in the engagement near Harrisonburg, Rockingham Co., Va., authority is given to have one of the captured Bucktails, the insignia of the Federal regiment, appended to the color staff of the First Maryland regiment. By order of Major-General Ewell:

, A. A. G."