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The prisoners taken were about 1,200, according to the reports of Sheridan's officers, or something over 1,000 by Early's account. Early also gives his loss in killed and wounded, without distinguishing between the two, as 1,860, and reports the capture of 1,429 prisoners from the Union army in the early hours of the day. Of these he had made sure by sending them promptly to the rear.
General Early's troops extended some little distance beyond our right, and when my flank neared the overlapping enemy, he turned on it, with the effect of causing a momentary confusion, but General McMillan quickly realizing the danger, broke the Confederates at the reentering angle by a counter charge with his brigade, doing his work so well that the enemy's flanking troops were cut off from their main body and left to shift for themselves.
When, therefore, on the morning of the 13th, Wright found Early gone from his front, he marched after him with the Sixth Corps, and ordered the detachment of the Nineteenth Corps to follow. Grant wished Wright to push on to Edwards Ferry to cut off Early's retreat across the Potomac.
It would doubtless have commended itself more highly to his men if it had been somewhat more so, when at daylight on the morning after the splendid success of September 19th they were ordered in pursuit of Early's army. The Confederate forces had taken position on Fisher's Hill, considered the Gibraltar of the Valley, and according to Sheridan, almost impregnable to a direct assault.
Perhaps it was due to a certain occultism in the atmosphere that Ellery Norris felt this pressure of the future on the afternoon of Mr. Early's reception to Ram Juna. Norris was a new young man in a new young city, and he had come West to live. However short and futile life may look to the old, it appears a big and long thing to twenty-three. Here in St.
It is needless to tell how Sheridan broke Early's left by an assault with the Nineteenth corps and Custer's cavalry at the same moment of the last successful charge upon his right. It was a famous victory, though not a bloodless one. Of the gallant men who went into the fight that morning on the union side, 588 never came out alive. Three thousand five hundred and sixteen were wounded.
B. T. Johnson, and J. D. Imboden, which heretofore had been operating in southwest and western Virginia under General Robert Ransom, Jr., and with the column thus formed, was ready to turn his attention to the lower Shenandoah Valley. At Early's suggestion General Lee authorized him to move north at an opportune moment, cross the upper Potomac into Maryland and threaten Washington.
Instead of risking anything more in the attempt to force the crossing in the face of Early's whole force in position, Wright was mediating a turning movement by way of Keyes's Gap, but Duffié, after riding hard through Ashby's Gap and crossing the Shenandoah at Berry's Ferry, likewise came to grief on the north bank, and so the day of the 19th of July was lost.
By the 27th all of Early's infantry was in position at Brucetown and Bunker Hill, his cavalry holding the outposts of Leetown and Smithfield, and on that day Merritt's division attacked the enemy's horse at Leetown, and pressed it back through Smithfield to the west side of the Opequon.
When Torbert reported to me the nature of his encounter, and that a part of Early's infantry was marching to the north, while Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry had gone toward Martinsburg, I thought that the Confederate general meditated crossing his cavalry into Maryland, so I sent Wilson by way of Harper's Ferry to watch his movements from Boonesboro', and at the same time directed Averell, who had reported from West Virginia some days before, to take post at Williamsport and hold the crossing there until he was driven away.
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