"Stuart, with two thousand of his cavalry, pressed our rear so eagerly that, when near Catlett's Station, he had inadvertently got ahead, by a flank movement of our Second Corps, General Warren acting as rearguard, and was hemmed in, where his whole command must have been destroyed or captured had he not succeeded in hiding it in a thicket of old field-pines, close by the road whereon our men marched by: the rear of the corps encamping close beside the enemy, utterly unsuspicious of their neighborhood, though every word uttered in our lines, as they passed, was distinctly heard by the lurking foe. Stuart at first resolved to abandon his guns and attempt to escape with moderate loss, but finally picked three of his men, gave them muskets, made them up so as to look as much as possible like our soldiers, and thus drop silently into our ranks as they passed, march awhile, then slip out on the other side of the column, and make all haste to General Lee, at Warrenton, in quest of help. During the night two of our officers, who stepped into the thicket, were quietly captured.
"At daylight the crack of skirmishers' muskets in the distance gave token that Lee had received and responded to the prayer for help, when Stuart promptly opened with grape and canister on the rear of our astounded column, which had bivouacked just in his front, throwing it into such confusion that he easily dashed by and rejoined his chief, having inflicted some loss and suffered little or none."
The above manoeuvre was a great and unexpected or unsought risk, which, however, did not prove disastrous to the authors, but which might not again be ventured with similar results. A performance resembling it somewhat was enacted by the Rebels, but with very different issue. Early in the morning of the fourteenth A. P. Hill's corps left Warrenton, with orders to strike our rear at Bristoe Station. They moved up the Alexandria Turnpike to Broad Run Church, where they deflected on the road to Greenwich, and soon after struck our trail just behind the Third Corps, and eagerly pursued it. They were busy picking up stragglers and making some preparation for an attack upon our unsuspecting corps, when about noon General Warren's Second Corps, which was still behind, and bringing up the rear, made its appearance on the tapis, and materially changed the programme of the scene. Hill, finding himself nicely sandwiched or trapped by his own indiscretion, turned away from the retreating Third Corps, to fight, and, if possible, drive back the advancing Second. Warren's surprise in finding an enemy in force before him was not less than Hill's in finding one behind him; but it took Warren only about ten minutes to adjust himself to this unexpected position of affairs, when his batteries opened with such precision and effect, aided by the musketry of his infantry, that the Rebels fell back in much greater haste than they had advanced, leaving six of their guns in our hands and multitudes of dead, wounded, and prisoners. Five of the captured guns, still serviceable, were at once seized and used against the disappointed foe with telling power. One historian says, "Our loss in killed and wounded was about two hundred, including Colonel James E. Mallon, Forty-second New York, killed, and General Tile, of Pennsylvania, wounded; that of the enemy was probably four hundred (besides prisoners), including Generals Posey (mortally), Kirkland, and Cooke, wounded, and Colonels Ruffin, First North Carolina, and Thompson, Fifth North Carolina Cavalry, killed."