Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/207



FTER the first battle of Manassas, Col. Eppa Hunton had been ordered to reoccupy Leesburg with his regiment, the Eighth Virginia; a little later Col. William Barksdale's Thirteenth Mississippi, Col. W. S. Featherston's Seventeenth Mississippi, a battery, and four companies of cavalry under Col. W. H. Jenifer, were sent to the same place, and these were organized into the Seventh brigade of the Confederate army of the Potomac, which, early in August, was put under command of Brig.-Gen. Nathan G. Evans, who had been promoted for his brave conduct July 21st. General Beauregard's object in locating this strong force at Leesburg was to guard his left flank from a Federal attack by way of several good roads that led from the fords of the upper Potomac, near that town, directly to his Bull run encampment; to watch the large Federal force that McClellan had located on the opposite side of the Potomac; to keep up a connection with the Confederate force in the lower Shenandoah valley by a good turnpike that led from Leesburg across the Blue ridge, and to save for his army the abundant supplies of the fertile county of Loudoun.

On the 15th of October General Banks' division of the Federal army was located at Dranestown, Md., about 15 miles due east from Leesburg, with detachments at Point of Rocks, Sandy Hook, Williamsport, etc.; while the division of Brig.-Gen. C. P. Stone, composed of six companies of cavalry, three of artillery, and the infantry brigades of Gens. W. A. Gorman and F. W. Lander and Col. E. D. Baker, was located at Poolesville, 8 miles north of east from Leesburg. The object in this disposition of so large a force was, not only to guard the right of the big Federal army that General McClellan was gathering at Washington, but especially to cover the important approaches from the northwest to Baltimore and the