A story was told in ’62 to the effect that Gen. Lee had said he would give ten dollars for every cavalryman killed or wounded in battle with the sabre, and if he had been held to the contract now he would have been ruined, for the men appeared to use their sabres that evening from choice, and numbers on both sides fell under the bloody blades.
After watching the conflict for some time, Col. White noticed a Yankee regiment wheeling on the right of Stuart’s line, and ordering his men forward met it fairly, driving it back to the woods in gallant style, for which he received General Stuart’s thanks.
"When night had stilled the battle’s hum" the troops bivouacked on the ground over which they had fought; but the news from the lines was discouraging, saying that General Lee had failed to take the heights; and when, an hour before day, the orders came to mount and fall back silently, for fear the enemy’s batteries would open fire again, the soldiers knew that the battle was lost, but they still trusted to the genius and generalship of their great leader to turn the defeat to their advantage in some way.
The 4th of July, a dismal day of rain and gloom was passed in gathering the stragglers and wagons together, and in burying the dead, but when evening came the battalion was divided; Colonel White, with Companies B, C and E, acting as rear guard for Ewell’s Corps, which brought up the rear in the retreat, as it had led the van of the army in the advance; and Maj. Ferneyhough, with Companies A, D and F, was sent to A. P. Hill, to be advance guard for his Corps, as it held the front of the army.
The whole march was full of harassing attacks by the enemy, but White fought those who followed, from every hill-top, only being compelled once to call upon the General for aid, when Gen. Gordon, the fiery Georgian, marched his brigade back and administered a reproof that made the Yankees chary of pressing Ewell’s rear guard too closely again.
Major F.’s command pressed forward under A. P. Hill’s orders, driving the enemy’s pickets as they went, and whipping a force of cavalry from the town of Waynesboro’, but when the army reached Hagerstown the battalion united again, and remained with Gen. Ewell.
Nothing of special interest, other than what was done by other commands, was performed by White’s battalion in the further progress of the retreat, and the history of it has been told by other pens so fully that were mine capable of the task there is nothing new to write, and when the army of General Lee, baffled, it is true, in its Northern campaign, but still in fighting trim and ready for battle, reached the South bank of the Potomac at Williamsport, the men felt that they were at home once more, and believed that the only result of the Gettysburg disaster would be to prolong the war a few more years, and indeed all hope of a speedy termination had died in the hearts of the battle-scarred soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, when, in connection with their own defeat, they counted the bloody siege and final surrender of Vicksburg, the news of which saluted their ears almost as soon as their own battle was over.
Almost as soon as he crossed the river, Colonel White reported to Gen. Stuart, and asked permission to take his battalion to Loudoun county, which that officer readily granted, and the “Comanches” marched rapidly to Castleman’s Ferry, but found the Shenandoah so high, from the heavy rains which had followed the battle, that it was impassable, and the Colonel encamped his men a short distance from the river to wait for it to fall.
CHAPTER XIII.
The battalion remained on the bank of the Shenandoah for a day, but seeing no decrease in the flood, impatience got the better of prudence, and the Colonel, giving way to the wishes of his men, (which in this case coincided so fully with his own,) marched them to the river, and such as were not afraid to “take water,” swam the horses across, while the others went over in a skiff. When about fifty men had got over, and the shades of an early twilight commenced to gather from the low-hanging clouds, a courier from Lieut. Moon, of the 6th Va. Cavalry, who had charge of the pickets in the Gap, came down the mountain and informed Col. White that the Yankees were moving into the Gap. The boys hastily dressed, and mounting their horses marched up to see if the report was true, but before going far they met Lieut. Moon retiring, while behind him came a large force of Yankee infantry; and with many a curse on the delay in crossing the river, the detachment turned back and passed up between mountain and river to the Shepherd’s mill road, which brought them out at the Trap. The next day they learned that Meade’s army was in Loudoun, following the track of Burnside, and as nearly all the men who had been scattered through the county, at their homes, returned to the command, the Colonel retired to Ashby’s Gap, where he resolved to make a fight, if anything like his number advanced upon him.