Saturday, July 18, 2015

1st Lieutenant Charles Fessenden Morse, April 28, 1862


April 28, 1862.

Yesterday, having just completed the usual Sunday inspection, we received an order in hot haste to get ready at once with one day's rations to make a reconnoissance. Our regiment, the Twenty-seventh Indiana, and eight hundred of the Vermont cavalry, formed the party. We went out on the Gordonsville road about nine or ten miles and drove in the rebel pickets, forcing them to display near two thousand cavalry and four regiments of infantry; this showed pretty plainly their position, and our object was accomplished. Jackson has apparently been reinforced by about five thousand troops, and is now in an entrenched position just the other side of the south fork of the Shenandoah, with a bridge between us and them, which has been stuffed full of combustibles ready to burn on our approach. We took two of Ashby's cavalry prisoners, and one of our cavalry was killed.

After a hard twenty-mile walk, we got back to camp about eight P. M. Our division (General Williams's) marched to this place last Thursday, eighteen miles from Newmarket. We are now distant from Staunton twenty-five miles, and from Gordonville sixty-five. The enemy have saved us the trouble of going to the former place by turning off on the Gordonville road. I suppose by this time some of General Fremont's force must be in Staunton.

SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 55

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