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Updated: June 19, 2025
The next morning Hill's and Taliaferro's divisions joined Trimble. Ewell remained at Bristoe; cavalry patrols were sent out in every direction, and Jackson, riding to Manassas, saw before him the reward of his splendid march. Streets of warehouses, stored to overflowing, had sprung up round the Junction. A line of freight cars, two miles in length, stood upon the railway.
Jackson's Corps consisted of D.H. Hill's, A.P. Hill's, Ewell's, and Taliaferro's Divisions. We marched by way of Chester Gap over the Blue Ridge, and came into camp near Culpepper on the 9th of November. The enemy had crossed the Potomac and was moving southward, by easy stages, on the east side of the mountain.
"Taliaferro's Brigade getting watered! All I ask is you'll just let me and my willows alone." He might ask, but Taliaferro's seemed hardly likely to grant. Taliaferro's had a harder time even than the Stonewall finding water. There was less there to find and it was muddier. The men, swearing at their luck, ranged up and down the stream.
West of the Hagerstown turnpike, and covering the ground as far as the Nicodemus Farm, was Jones' division; the Stonewall and Jones' brigades in front, Taliaferro's and Starke's along the edge of the wood in rear. Hood, in third line, stood near the Dunkard Church; and on Hood's right were three of Longstreet's batteries under Colonel Stephen Lee.
It was not till the morning was well on that the brigade of Taliaferro's division near Groveton, commanded by Colonel Bradley Johnson, was warned by the cavalry that the enemy was moving through Gainesville in great strength. A skirmish took place a mile or two north of that village, and Johnson, finding himself menaced by far superior numbers, fell back to the wood near the Douglass House.
The men who were to be Taliaferro's first helpers were living in the little village of Washington, Connecticut two brothers, one twenty-three years old and the other twenty-one. Here a great revival occurred and among those whose lives were changed were Samuel Pond and Gideon Pond. The next year the older of the two went to the West and drifted into the frontier town of Galena.
The 42nd Virginia, outflanked in turn, was compelled to give ground; and the Federals, without waiting to reform, swept rapidly through the wood, and bore down upon the flank of Taliaferro's brigade and Winder's batteries. And now occurred a scene of terrible confusion.
An hour later it turned southward, Stuart on the long column's left flank, screening it from observation, and skirmishing hotly through the hours that ensued. The army crossed Crump's Creek, passed Taliaferro's Mill, crossed other creeks, crept southward through hot, thick woods. Mid-day came and passed. The head of the column turned east, and came shortly to a cross-roads.
With clarion sound, with tossing colours, with huzzas and waving sabres, a glorious and fearful sight, the cavalry rushed diagonally across the trampled field, its flank exposed to the North Carolinians. These opened a blasting fire while Taliaferro's brigade met it full, and the 13th Virginia, couched behind a grey zigzag of fence, gave volley after volley.
Early was hard pressed, but, Taliaferro's brigade advancing on his left, he held his own; and on the highroad, raked by a Confederate gun, the enemy was unable to push forward. But within the wood to the left, at the very point where Jackson had advised precaution, the line of defence was broken through.
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