The Confederates were led in the fighting by Colonel Eppa Hunton of the 8th Virginia. It was he who rallied that regiment when a part of it was in retreat and turned threatened disaster into victory. Colonel Hunton had been born in Fauquier on the 2nd September, 1822, of a family long settled in that County. At the outbreak of the war he was practicing law in Prince William and held a commission as brigadier general in the Militia. After the Ordinance of Secession was adopted, he was commissioned a colonel by Governor Letcher and ordered to raise the 8th Virginia Infantry. For that purpose he proceeded to Leesburg and recruited his command. Chas. B. Tebbs became Lieut. Colonel and Norborne Berkeley, Major. Both were of Loudoun and Berkeley eventually succeeded Hunton in command of the Regiment. Of the ten companies in the regiment, six originally were made up of Loudoun men under Captains William N. Berkeley, Nathaniel Heaton, Alexander Grayson, William Simpson, Wampter, and John R. Carter. Of the remaining four companies, one was from Prince William, one from Fairfax and two from Fauquier. During the war the regiment covered itself with glory by its splendid fighting qualities from the first Manassas to Pickett's charge at Gettysburg and suffered frightful losses. It became known from these losses, as the "Bloody Eighth." Hunton, shot through the leg at Gettysburg, was promoted for his valour there to brigadier general. After the war he lived in Warrenton, practicing his profession with marked ability in Fauquier, Loudoun, and Prince William where juries, frequently including members of his former regiment, seldom failed to give him their verdict. He served as a member of the House of Representatives and later as United States Senator from Virginia, holding in his professional and political life the esteem and affection he had won on many a field of battle.
Acting as a volunteer scout for Colonel Hunton, that day of the Ball's Bluff Battle was a young trooper of Ashby's Cavalry who, migrating from Maryland to Loudoun in 1857, purchased a farm on the shore of the Potomac and became very much of a Virginian. Elijah Viers White was born in Poolesville, Maryland, in 1832, attended Lima Seminary in Livingston County, New York, and later spent two years at Granville College in Licking County, Ohio. With the restlessness of his age he went to Kansas in 1855 and, as a member of a Missouri company, had some part in the factional fighting then distracting that territory. At the time of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry he served as a corporal in the Loudoun Cavalry and soon after the outbreak of the war was transferred to Ashby's Legion. By December, 1861, he was a captain, reporting to General Hill, and in charge of a line of couriers between Leesburg and Winchester. During the winter of 1861-'62 this force was quartered in Waterford and, somewhat augmented in numbers, was assigned to scouting and guarding the Potomac shore. Thus originated the unit which became so famous in Loudoun's history—the 35th Virginia Cavalry[157] or, as it was more generally known, "White's Battalion"—the "Comanches" affectionately held in local memory. Although having but about twenty-five men when wintering in Waterford, the organization increased with such rapidity that before the war's end its rolls, according to Captain Frank M. Myers, its historian, bore nearly 700 names. On the 28th October, 1862, it was formally mustered into the Confederate service by Colonel Bradley T. Johnson of General J. E. B. Stuart's staff. In its inception formed for scouting, raiding and other local duty, and regarded as an independent organization, it was fated in January, 1863, to become a part of Brigadier General William E. Jones' Brigade and thenceforward continued a part of the regular military establishment of the Confederacy.
As the fame and exploits of the command and its leader grew, the latter was promoted major in October, 1862, and lieutenant colonel in February, 1863. That he was not made a brigadier-general in accordance with the recommendation of the military committee of the Confederate Congress was due chiefly to General Lee's personal disapproval of Colonel White's lack of severity as a disciplinarian. Undoubtedly his men took advantage of his protective attitude toward them and incidents of insubordination, desertion, and even mutiny were not infrequent;[158] but as enthusiastic and fearless fighters they won and held the respect of both sides alike. How well and dearly this reputation as warriors was earned is shown by their participation in no less than thirty-one battles, including Cold Harbor, Sharpsburg (Antietam), Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Appomattox and in fifty-nine recorded minor engagements as well.[159] Colonel White himself was severely wounded on no less than seven occasions. Such was the esteem in which he continued to be held in Loudoun after the war, that he was elected sheriff of the county and also its treasurer. He was a principal founder and the first president of the Peoples National Bank of Leesburg which position he continued to occupy until his death in 1907. General Eppa Hunton in his autobiography has this to say of him: "No man in the Confederate Army stood higher for bravery, dash and patriotic devotion than Colonel 'Lige' White."
In the meanwhile, as we have seen, the Loudoun Rangers had been organized on the territory west and north of the Catoctin Mountain by Union men and had been taken into the Federal service. In August, 1862, this command, then numbering about fifty, was making its headquarters in the small brick Baptist Meeting House which still stands in Waterford, whence it had been participating in raids on the Confederate portion of the county. About 3:00 o'clock in the morning of the 27th of August, while a certain number of the Rangers were away from the church on raids or picket duty, Captain E. V. White, with forty or fifty men, made a carefully planned attack on the building and after some sharp fighting, in which one of the Rangers was killed and ten wounded, the men in the church surrendered and were taken prisoners and paroled.
On the 1st September the Rangers were involved in another fight, this time with Colonel Munford's 2nd Virginia Cavalry sent forward by General Stuart for that purpose, the encounter taking place between the top of Mile Hill and the Big Spring on the Carolina Road. The Rangers were at the time reinforced by about 125 men of Cole's Maryland Cavalry but the Confederates, by getting in their rear and completely surrounding them, put them to route in a hot sabre fight. Goodhart, the Rangers' historian, comments that these two defeats, coming so closely together, almost broke up that organization and "did to a very large extent interfere with the future usefulness of the command."[160] It continued in service, however, until the end of the war, participating in the battle of Antietam, in the Gettysburg campaign, and in the Shenandoah Valley campaign in September, 1864.
It was in the same September of 1862, it will be remembered, that Lee undertook his first invasion of Maryland. He and General Stonewall Jackson spent the night at the residence of the late Henry T. Harrison on the west side of King Street, now occupied by Mr. Harrison's grandchildren, Mr. Cuthbert Conrad and his two sisters. "The triumphant army of Lee," writes Head "on the eve of the first Maryland campaign, was halted at Leesburg and stripped of all superfluous transportation, broken-down horses and wagons and batteries not supplied with good horses being left behind."[161] It is said that Jackson rose early in the morning from his bed in the Harrison house to examine the several suggested points for the Southern Army to cross the Potomac. He is locally credited with the decision that the place known as White's Ford was best for the purpose and it was there, on the 5th September, that much of the Army crossed. With such a vast number to put across the river, it is probable that all the ferries and fords in the Leesburg neighborhood were used. It is well to note that White's Ford and the present White's Ferry (then known as Conrad's Ferry) are two very different places. The Ferry is at the end of the road now marked by the State, running along the south side of Rockland; the Ford is to the north thereof at the head of Mason's Island. Obviously the depth of the water at White's Ferry would preclude its use as a ford. Goodhart says Edwards' and Noland's Ferries were used,[162] while the report of the Federal Signal Officer (Major A. J. Myers) made to Brigadier General S. Williams, dated the 6th October, 1862, records the Confederates "crossing the Potomac near the Monocacy, and the commencement of their movement into Maryland."[163] Nevertheless the Confederate official reports definitely shew that a great number, probably the major part of the vast host, crossed at White's Ford, including Stonewall Jackson's own men, General Early's Division (which had passed through Leesburg the day before and camped that night "near a large spring"—whether Big Spring or the old Ducking Pond of Raspberry Plain does not definitely appear); General Hood's Division, Colonel B. T. Johnson's 2nd Virginia Brigade, McGowan's Brigade, etc.[164] Never were the hopes of the Confederates more rosy; it is recorded that, as the Army crossed the river, the men sang and cheered with joy and that every band played "Maryland, my Maryland." Twelve days later there was fought the battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day's conflict of the whole war, and on the night of the 18th September the Confederates, in retreat but in good order, recrossed the Potomac.
While the battle of Antietam was being so hotly fought in nearby Maryland, Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, advancing from Washington with ten companies of Federal cavalry, reached Leesburg where there still remained a small Confederate force made up of Company A of the 6th Virginia Cavalry and about forty Mississippi infantrymen under Captain Gibson, then acting as Provost Marshal of the town. Being largely outnumbered, the Confederates were about to retire when they were joined by Captain E. V. White and thirty of his men. Persuading the soldiers already there to make an effort to hold the town, White and his men exchanged shots with the Federal advance guard; but finding that Kilpatrick was bringing a battery forward, the Confederates retreated through the town's streets. Kilpatrick, however, had already trained his cannon upon Leesburg, thereby subjecting it to its first and only artillery bombardment and greatly terrifying the civilian population. Myers records that "shrieking shells came crashing through walls and roofs" of Leesburg's buildings. The Federal report avers that but a few shells were fired "over the town."[165] After this brief artillery fire, Kilpatrick sent a detachment of his 10th New York Cavalry through Leesburg's streets who came in touch with the Confederates on the town's outskirts. Here Captain White, about to lead his cavalry in a charge, was severely wounded by the fire of the Confederate Infantry and as his men, in retreat, carried him to Hamilton, the Confederate Infantry also fell back, leaving the town to Kilpatrick. By way of souvenir of this little engagement, there still remains a bullet-hole in the front door of the house on the south side of East Market street then occupied by the late Burr W. Harrison but now the residence of his grandson, the Hon. Charles F. Harrison, Commonwealth's Attorney of Loudoun. According to the official Federal report, already quoted, the Confederate "force at Leesburg was principally comprised of convalescents and cavalry sent to escort them. The whole country from Warrenton to Leesburg is filled with sick soldiers abandoned on the wayside by the enemy."
At the outbreak of the war Loudoun was, as it now again has come to be, one of the most fertile, prosperous and best farmed counties in all Virginia. When the fighting was fairly under way, it, from its position as border territory, was dominated by one side after the other but at almost all times was overrun by scouts and raiding parties from both armies. Her farms and their abundant livestock and produce offered constant, if unwilling, invitation to these soldiers to replenish their need of horses, cattle, hogs, grain and forage; and every account of the period refers again and again to instances of seizure of these supplies, involving the greatest hardships, as they came to do, to the rightful owners. It seems to have made little difference as to which side was temporarily in control, so far as these levies were concerned, for both Federals and Confederates appropriated supplies from the farms of foes and friends alike, sometimes, it is true, giving receipts or certificates covering what they had taken, with a cheerful promise of ultimate compensation, and sometimes wholly waiving that formality. Also, as the armies passed and repassed, there were roving deserters from both sides and "the mountains were infested with horse-thieves and desperadoes who were ready to prey upon the inhabitants, regardless as to whether their sympathies were with the North or South."[166] "Numerous raids" quoting Deck and Heaton, "made by both armies drained the abundant food resources of the county. The women and the children were hard pressed for food, but they met the privations of war bravely and loyally."[167] Head, writing prior to 1908, when there still lived many whose knowledge of war conditions in Loudoun was based on personal experience and observation and who, on every hand, were available for consultation, says that the people of the county
"probably suffered more real hardships and deprivations than any other community of like size in the Southland.... Both armies, prompted either by fancied military necessity or malice, burned or confiscated valuable forage crops and other stores, and nearly every locality, at one time or another, witnessed depredation, robbery, murder, arson and rapine. Several towns were shelled, sacked and burned but the worse damage was done the country districts by raiding parties of Federals."[168] Col. Mosby, of the famous Partisan Rangers, adds his testimony, writing particularly of the upper part of Fauquier and Loudoun:
"Although that region was the Flanders of the war, and harried worse than any of which history furnishes an example since the desolation of the Palatinates by Louis XIV, yet the stubborn faith of the people never wavered. Amid fire and sword they remained true to the last, and supported me through all the trials of the war."[169]