(The whole campaign, Fredericksburg to Gettysburg. Lee spent the winter of 1863 in Culpeper, to the lower left, with J.E.B. Stuart occupying Fleetwood Hill at Brandy Station to screen the main force of the Army of Northern Virginia from the predations of Union cavalry).
I made it through the weekend- it was an aggressive one- starting at the farm and then off to Maryland, remembering to remove the firearms from the vehicle in preparation. I was headed for a soiree in Westminster, in Carroll County. It was in the line of a wedding reception, a little delayed, being thrown by old friends in honor or their daughter, who met her new husband (an independence-minded Scot) while on deployment in Afghanistan.
That is the sort of world we live in now. “Oh, I met him in the chow hall in Bagram Air Base” is just as natural a place to meet a future mate as a campus mixer.
We were trying to figure out exactly how many wars we had been in since we met with a lady who had been on the Joint Staff. We stopped at six or seven- none of them but one officially declared. Wait, was DESERT STORM a war or a massive UN peacekeeping operation?
Never mind. I had started the day with a stirring sight: the “Potomac Flight” of 28 AT-6/SNJ WWII war birds finally came off. I stopped to watch them return from their ceremonial formation flight up the Potomac and over the Pentagon and Arlington National cemetery. I missed the B-25 Mitchell bomber- my chance to buy a ride in one of the aircraft Jimmy Doolittle took for a 30-second ride over Tokyo was washed out- and the P-51 Mustang was among the missing. But I caught all the Texans in the landing pattern.
Really cool. The roar of the radial engines over T. I. Martin Field was inspirational- and the precision of the aviators was impressive as they transitioned from their diamond formation and into “the break” for an evenly spaced landing was crisp. I gave them a salute and slid back into the driver’s seat of the Panzer for the next step in the trip.
The field is hard by Brandy Station, and the Garmin GPS on the dashboard was not cooperating. It kept telling me to drive to I-66 and take the freeway up to Westminster. I was having none of it. If I was going to be starting from Brandy Station, I thought I should follow the line of march that J.E.B. Stuart took on the way to Gettysburg, and see the land as they saw it long ago.
Stuart’s cavalry were supposed to screen the main body of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia on his invasion of Maryland, heading for Pennsylvania. The sprawl of Washington was evident as I swung north on Rt 15 at Warrenton, where ‘Little Mac’ McClellan was relieved by Mr. Lincoln for timidity, but the hills abide and the foliage and dry corn standing in the fields was so pretty it hurt.
I crossed the Potomac at Point of Rocks, marveling that the lovely rolling mountains are exactly the same as what the troopers saw 151 years ago.
I was late for the reception, but that was all right. I was perfectly calibrated for the delightful sun and a vista that included the Catoctin Mountain Park and Camp David. We swapped several lies and caught up with old friends and met new ones over delightful fried chicken and chili and ziti and slaw and cornbread.
Sipping white wine on ice under the white tents, my pal told me about the events of June and July, 1863. Meade’s Union Headquarters was right here,” he said, pointing at the poster board he made of points of interest in his retirement town. “And it was part of J.E.B.’s wild ride. The house is adjacent to the land where Captain Charles Corbit and his1st and 2nd Delaware Cavalry rode into history.”
Over more of that fabulous chicken, he elaborated. “The Union horsemen had arrived in Westminster the night of the 28th of June. They were bivouacked here, and some of the men were having their horses re-shod at a farrier south of town and were dismounted. They were caught flat-footed by the arrival of the Beau Sabreur’s force.
Captain Corbit rallied the troops who still had their mounts and led them on a wild cavalry charge down Main Street towards the Rebels, meeting them at the intersection with Washington Road, virtually in the front yard of the house.
The Federals were quickly defeated by Stuart’s horsemen- despite the clear improvement of Union cavalry, the Delaware boys were no match for the Rebels. Captain Corbit, along with the other company commander, Lieutenant Caleb Churchman, were captured along with more than half of the other Union troopers. The encounter resulted in two KIA and eleven wounded for the Union.
Two Confederate officers were killed and ten more troopers were wounded. One of the Confederate officers, Lt. John William Murray, Co. E, 4th Virginia cavalry, is buried in the graveyard of Ascension Episcopal Church, an imposing stone structure less than a mile from my pal’s front door.
The battle prompted Stuart’s cavalry to stay the night in Westminster, delaying his arrival at Gettysburg and depriving Gen. Lee of important intelligence about Union troop movements, as 100,000 soldiers flooded out of Washington in a desperate dash to bring Lee’s force to heel.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I took the easy way home, on the freeways. They did not.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303