The march of this day was one of the noted ones of the war. Our battery traveled about thirty-five miles, and the infantry of the brigade, being camped within a mile of Harper's Ferry, made more than forty miles through rain and mud. The cause of this haste was soon revealed. General Fremont, with a large army, was moving rapidly from the north to cut us off, and was already nearer our base than we were, while General Shields, with another large force, was pushing from the southeast, having also the advantage of us in distance, and trying to unite with Fremont, and General McDowell with 20,000 men was at Fredericksburg. The roads on which the three armies were marching concentrated at Strasburg, and Jackson was the first to get there. Two of our guns were put in position on a fortified hill near the town, from which I could see the pickets of both the opposing armies on their respective roads and numbers of our stragglers still following on behind us, between the two. Many of our officers had collected around our guns with their field-glasses, and, at the suggestion of one of them, we fired a few rounds at the enemy's videttes "to hurry up our stragglers."
The next day, when near the village of Edinburg, a squadron of our cavalry, under command of General Munford, was badly stampeded by a charge of Federal cavalry. Suddenly some of these men and horses without riders came dashing through our battery, apparently blind to objects in their front. One of our company was knocked down by the knees of a flying horse, and, as the horse was making his next leap toward him, his bridle was seized by a driver and the horse almost doubled up and brought to a standstill. This was the only time I ever heard a field-officer upbraided by privates; but one of the officers got ample abuse from us on that occasion.
I had now again, since Winchester, been assigned to a Parrott gun, and it, with another, was ordered into position on the left of the road. The Federals soon opened on us with two guns occupying an unfavorable position considerably below us. The gunner of my piece was J. P. Smith, who afterward became an aide on General Jackson's staff, and was with him when he received his death-wound at Chancellorsville. One of the guns firing at us could not, for some time, be accurately located, owing to some small trees, etc., which intervened, so the other gun received most of our attention. Finally, I marked the hidden one exactly, beyond a small tree, from the puff of smoke when it fired. I then asked J. P., as we called him, to let me try a shot at it, to which he kindly assented. I got a first-rate aim and ordered "Fire!" The enemy's gun did not fire again, though its companion continued for some time. I have often wished to know what damage I did them.