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The birdlike piping of hylas came from a marshy strip of woodland that ran through the centre of the town and a toad was croaking at the foot of Imboden Hill. "And they come next."
From Point of Rocks, twelve miles east of Harper's Ferry, to Martinsburg, fifteen miles west, the line was double. "The coal traffic along it," says General Imboden, "was immense, for the Washington Government was accumulating supplies of coal on the seaboard. A detachment was posted at Point of Rocks, and the 5th Virginia Infantry at Martinsburg.
It was just before midnight, and we went as usual back of Imboden Hill, through moon-dappled beeches, and Grayson turned off into the woods where there was no path, both of us silent.
The look of anxiety on his countenance was apparent. The sound of cannon grew louder and more frequent; we were rushed rapidly to the front. The First brigade followed and to the officer in command of it was assigned the task of holding back Lee's army while the Michigan brigade tried titles with Imboden.
Within another hour the opposing forces were at close grips again, and the Federals, flushed with success and steadied by the regulars, seemed certain to succeed. Imboden has vividly described his meeting Jackson at this time. "The fight was just then hot enough to make him feel well. His eyes fairly blazed.
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.
Here was the many-ravined, tree-dotted, southward rise by which, in concave line, the Northern brigades and batteries, pressing across the bends of the branch, advanced to the famed Henry house plateau that key of victory where by midday fell all the horrid weight of the battle; where the guns of Ricketts and Griffen for the North and of Walton and Imboden for the South crashed and mowed, and across and across which the opposing infantries volleyed and bled, screamed, groaned, swayed, and drove each other, staggered, panted, rallied, cheered, and fell or fought on among the fallen.
"Resolved, That a copy of the foregoing preamble, and these resolutions, signed by the president and secretary, be transmitted to the Governor of Virginia, with a request that the same be preserved in the archives of the State; and that another copy be sent to the family of General Lee. "J.D. IMBODEN, Ex. NORTON, JOHN MITCHEL, C.K. MARSHALL, T.L. SNEAD, NORMAN D. SAMPSON, Wm.
The Confederate army at this date was about twenty thousand strong, and consisted of Early's own corps, with Generals Rodes, Ramseur, and Gordon commanding its divisions; the infantry of Breckenridge from southwestern Virginia; three battalions of artillery; and the cavalry brigades of Vaughn, Johnson, McCausland, and Imboden.
Every afternoon Marston would come in from the mines and they would go off horseback together, over ground that I well knew for I had been all over it myself up through the gray-peaked rhododendron-bordered Gap with the swirling water below them and the gray rock high above where another such foolish lover lost his life, climbing to get a flower for his sweetheart, or down the winding dirt road into Lee, or up through the beech woods behind Imboden Hill, or climbing the spur of Morris's Farm to watch the sunset over the majestic Big Black Mountains, where the Wild Dog lived, and back through the fragrant, cool, moonlit woods.
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