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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