Soon after this, Gen. Rosser rode up and asked hastily, “Where are the Yankees?” To which Conrad’s men replied, “Here are the prisoners.”
Lieut. Conrad says, that there were desperate attempts on the part of some of the men to burn a large brick water tank at the Station, while others set fire to the Rail Road bridge and tried to learn how often they could ride over it on a hand car before it fell in, but the main body engaged in securing the plunder, of which there was a great quantity.
After damaging the Rail Road as much as possible and securing all the plunder and prisoners, the column turned towards home, but on reaching the graded road from New Creek to Romney, some scouts reported to Gen. Rosser that Kelly was advancing with five regiments of mounted infantry to cut him off, while other scouts reported that Averill, with his command, had reached Burlington.
The situation was not very pleasant now and Rosser turned back, but he soon struck a new mountain road, and ordering White to take the front, pushed rapidly forward, coming out on the grade about four miles east of Burlington, and here Lieut. Conrad and John Stephenson, who had been scouting, reported the road barricaded and camp-fires in front. Col. White advanced cautiously to the barricade, and finding no enemy there he approached the camp-fires, but they, too, were deserted, and he soon learned that Averill had marched from them only half an hour before, under the impression that Rosser was marching on Cumberland. This left the road clear, and now the raiders moved quietly along once more, and took with them a large drove of cattle, marching until late in the night, when the General halted his people, but had them moving again by dawn.
The Yankees soon learned that their game had slipped them and turned to follow, but all the circumstances in the case showed that they didn’t care to overtake them, and Averill’s march from Burlington was evidently made to avoid contact with Rosser, for he simply moved out of the road and when the rebel brigade had passed he quietly fell in the rear and made no sign of attack until Rosser reached Moorfield, when he drove in the Confederate pickets, but refused most positively to touch the tempting bait by which General Rosser tried to entice him in reach of Early’s infantry, who were still at this place. Averill’s infantry came to the support of his cavalry, but no inducement could make them do anything but skirmish, and finally Rosser ordered Col. White to charge them, but recalled the order just as the battalion was ready to start, and now everything—the ninety wagons, three hundred cattle, and two hundred and fifty prisoners—being safely moving on the road to the Valley, Gen. Rosser wheeled his brigade into marching column, and followed “Old Jubal,” leaving White in the rear to amuse Gen. Averill. As soon as he was gone, the Yankees charged into town and chased a few vedettes some distance up the road, but Lieut. Conrad with a party met and drove them back.
While retiring slowly towards the mountain the Colonel had his horse killed dead by a sharpshooter, fully one thousand yards distant, and he would have been captured by a party of the enemy that advanced up the road, at the moment, only for the devotion of J. Clendenning, of Co. C, who dismounted and gave him his horse.
This, and the horse of John Stephenson killed in the charge at Patterson’s Creek, was all the loss sustained by the battalion during the raid, and I believe not a man in the whole brigade was injured, otherwise than by taking on a little too much “wood and water” occasionally.
The battalion reached camp on the 5th of February, and on the 6th the first squadron, now under Capt. Myers, was ordered to Brock’s Gap on picket, where it remained for three weeks, during which time the brigade marched to a camp near Weyer’s Cave, where the Colonel organized a court-martial for the trial of the deserters, and on the return of the first squadron, Company A, now having about eighty-five men, placed seventy-seven of them under arrest for absence without leave, while Co. C had all her boys, but about a dozen, in the same predicament; but the court worked fast, and soon had them all released on double duty for a month, and for a few days only two incidents broke the monotony of the camp; the first being a grand horse race, and the second a grand speech from Capt. J. Mort. Kilgour, to the brigade, on the origin and ultimate results of the war; in which he located the origin in the “rule or ruin” spirit that made the Puritans desolate England in the days of Cromwell, and who, on the overthrow of their power there by the death of their leader, emigrated to America; and with prophetic finger he raised the curtain from the future and showed its ultimate results to be the abolition of negro slavery and the Christianization of Africa.
On the 29th of February a report reached the General, about 9 o’clock at night, that a grand raid on Richmond, under Kilpatrick and Dahlgren, was in progress, and hastily calling out his “people,” Rosser marched all night through a freezing rain, over the mountain to Charlottesville, reaching that place about noon, March 1st.
As the part taken by Rosser’s brigade in this most intolerable piece of audacious foolishness, on both sides, was of little importance, I shall merely give a brief journal of the marching and counter-marching from the outset.