WASHINGTON, April 14. – The Times’ correspondent telegraphs
to-night from Budd’s Ferry as follows:
Hooker’s Division, Thursday, April 3.
A corps of picked men belonging to the Excelsior Brigade
left Liverpool Point under command of Gen. Sickles, early on Tuesday morning
for Stafford Court House, on a reconnoissance; the troops landed at the
Shipping Point Batteries and marched from thence past Dumfrees through Acqua
[sic] to Stafford, C. H. There was
skirmishing between a body of 600 rebel cavalry and the advance corps of
Sickles’ command, six miles this side of Stafford, and firing on both sides was
continued until we reached that place.
The rebels in their retreat set fire to the town and all the
stores. Our forces promptly stopped the
conflagration. A lot of provisions,
horses, stores, &c., fell into our hands.
From Brooke station a force of 1,200 rebel infantry and a battery of 6
field pieces were moving up to support the cavalry. After remaining in Stafford C. H. for three
hours, camp fires were built on the hill to deceive the rebels while our force
withdrew from the place. Gen. Sickles with
part of his corps arrived back at Shipping Point this morning; the rest came to
Budd’s Ferry opposite Liverpool Point.
Our casualties were two wounded and a few missing. The corps marched forty-eight miles in
seventeen hours over the worst mountain roads.
At Fredericksburg there are few troops, they are falling back to Richmond. The citizens state that the Confederate
Government intend abandoning Virginia.
– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye,
Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 12, 1862, p. 4
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