Centreville, July 19, 7 P. M.
All Thursday and Friday, we lay by the roadside, booted and
saddled, — waiting for orders. Yesterday, about noon, orders came, and since
then we have been marching hard. I haven't told you yet that I was serving with
infantry, — and indeed I hope I have shaken them off for some time, — they are
fifteen miles behind, and I don't mean to let them draw any nearer. I was ordered
on Wednesday to take command of all the available cavalry in the district
(about 650 only) and report to General Rufus King, who was to move out along
the line of the Orange and Alexandria R. R., and get it ready to supply Meade's
Army at Warrenton or Manassas Gap. I was to precede his march and reconnoitre
towards the front and towards the Gaps.1 Yesterday word came that
Lee was again “conscripting” along the Occoquan, and that the conscripts (all
men under 45) were to be at Bentsville; so down I started with three squadrons,
found no conscripts, but arrested the Lieut.-Colonel who had ordered the draft,
and brought him in with quite a number of other prisoners, — much to the delight, I believe, of the
neighbourhood. To-morrow I don't know where I shall go, but to-night I wish you
could see our bivouac; it is on the slopes of Centreville facing West, one of
the most commanding positions in Virginia; now, just at dusk, it commands a
lovely, indistinct view stretching quite out to the Blue Ridge.
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 276-7
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