Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/42

34 the morning of June 23, was again riding between the camps of the different corps in Fairfax and Loudoun. All was quiet, there was no sign of a movement. Hooker was waiting for Lee. * * The camps of the different corps were so far apart that it was easy to ride between them. After gathering the information General Lee wanted, I turned my face late in the afternoon to the Bull Run Mountain.. .. Reynolds with the first Corps was at Guilford, about two miles off; the third corps (Sickles), was at Gum Springs about the same distance in another direction; while Meade's corps and the cavalry were six or eight miles away at Aldie."

He says on page 81:

"I got to Stuart early the next morning. He listened to what I told him, wrote a dispatch, sent off a courier to General Lee. * * * * The information was that Hooker's army was still resting in the camps where it had been for a week."

And again, on pages 169 and 170, June 24th:

"Stuart was anxiously waiting to hear what Hooker was doing. He must then have received General Lee's order of 5 P. M., of the 23rd. * * * I told him that Hooker was quiet, waiting on Lee."

"After hearing my report, Stuart wrote a letter to General Lee the most of it at my dictation giving him the information I had brought."

The information obtained by Col. Mosby on the 23rd and communicated to General Stuart on the morning of June 24th, after he had received the second letter from General Lee, dated June 23rd, giving him permission to cross the Potomac east of the Blue Ridge, provided he could do so without hindrance, no doubt influenced him to cross at Seneca instead of Shepherds-town, for Hooker's army had then made no movement northward; and he believed that by crossing at Seneca he would lose no time in getting into the position assigned him on Ewell's right; but at the critical moment Hooker's movement toward the Potomac began, and delayed Stuart's crossing of the river two days. Thus it occurred that when he entered Maryland on