Monday morning, June
24th.
I advanced with Colonel J. W. Allen's regiment and Captain
Pendleton's Battery, but the enemy retreated across the river, and, after
reconnoitring their camp, I returned to my present position, four miles north
of Martinsburg. The Federal troops were in two camps, one estimated at about
six hundred, and the other at nine hundred. You spoke of the cause of the South
being gloomy. It is not so here. I am well satisfied that the enemy are afraid
to meet us, and our troops are anxious for an engagement. A few days since
Colonel A. P. Hill, who had been sent to Romney, despatched a detachment to
burn a bridge eighteen miles west of Cumberland. The enterprise was successful.
The enemy lost two guns and their colors. I regret to see our ladies making
those things they call “Havelocks,”1 as their time and money could
be much more usefully employed in providing haversacks for the soldiers, many
of whom have none in which to carry their rations. I have been presented with
three Havelocks, but I do not intend to wear them, for, as far as I am
concerned, I shall show that such protection is unnecessary in this climate.
___________
1 A covering to protect the head and neck from
the sun.
SOURCE: Mary Anna Jackson, Life and Letters of
General Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson), p. 163
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