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We went viâ Catlett's Station, which place we reached at two o'clock P. M. Nearly every step of the march was on familiar ground, where we had passed and repassed many times. It seemed like meeting old friends, and nearly every object we saw suggested thoughts and experiences of the past. At Warrenton Junction we rejoined the Cavalry Corps, now under the command of General Alfred Pleasonton.
Banks at Winchester thinks you may have gone against Shields at Luray, or King at Catlett's, or Doubleday at Fredericksburg, or gone to Richmond but that Ewell is moving west on Moorefield!" "Good! good!" said Jackson. Staff arrived, and he proceeded to issue rapid and precise orders. All given, staff hurried off, and the general spoke to Jim. "Call me when General Ewell comes."
Hooker had been instructed to ascertain the strength of the enemy at Manassas, for Pope was still under the impression that the attack on his rear was nothing more than a repetition of the raid on Catlett's Station. Striking the Confederate outposts at Kettle Run, he deployed his troops in three lines and pushed briskly forward.
Some of Stuart's performances were exceedingly hazardous, as the following well-described narrative from a well-known pen will clearly show: "Stuart, with two thousand of his cavalry, pressed our rear so eagerly that, when near Catlett's Station, he had inadvertently got ahead, by a flank movement of our Second Corps, General Warren acting as rearguard, and was hemmed in, where his whole command must have been destroyed or captured had he not succeeded in hiding it in a thicket of old field-pines, close by the road whereon our men marched by: the rear of the corps encamping close beside the enemy, utterly unsuspicious of their neighborhood, though every word uttered in our lines, as they passed, was distinctly heard by the lurking foe.
Four days later General Stuart, with a large force of cavalry, having passed to the rear of the Federal army, captured, at Catlett's Station, General Pope's headquarters wagon with his official papers and personal effects. As his plan of campaign was to be governed by General Lee's movements, these papers were not very reliable guides.
Stuart had been directed by General Lee to make an attack, with a cavalry force, on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, in the enemy's rear; he had promptly carried out his orders by striking the Federal communications at Catlett's Station, had destroyed there all that he found, and torn up the railroad, but, better than all, had captured a box containing official papers belonging to General Pope.
"A pretty woman, in war-time," said a Captain, aside, to me, "is not to be sneezed at." At "Catlett's," a station near Warrenton Junction, we narrowly escaped a collision with a train behind, and the occupants of our train, women included, leaped down an embankment with marvellous agility. Here we switched off to the right, and at four o'clock dismounted at the pleasant village of Warrenton.
Around the three converging armies rested or advanced other bodies of blue troops, hovering, watchful of the chance to strike. Saxton at Harper's Ferry had seven thousand; Banks at Williamsport had seven thousand. Ord, commanding McDowell's second division, was at Manassas Gap with nine thousand. King, the third division, had ten thousand, near Catlett's Station.
McClellan, bent on besieging Richmond in due form, crawled cautiously about the intervening swamps of the oozy Chickahominy. McDowell, who could not advance alone, remained at Fredericksburg. Shields stood behind him, near Catlett's Station, to keep another eye on nervous Washington.
Pope's troops therefore mostly drew east during the twentyeighth, forming by nightfall a long irregular line, facing west, with its right beyond Centreville and its extreme left held by Banks's mauled divisions south of Catlett's Station.
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