A day or two after my arrival at my post, I succeeded in buying a very good riding horse, and hired a capable servant. I may as well say just here that I found Colonel Manning, my immediate superior, an exceedingly easy man to get along with. Unquestionably a gentleman in his tastes and habits, and brave as a lion, he knew comparatively little of his work as Ordnance officer, and was unable to write an ordinary official letter correctly. Spelling was indeed his weakest point. He was from Aberdeen, Miss., and died at his home there three or four years after the surrender. Lieutenant Leech was from Charlottesville, Va., and was very quiet and unassuming. Lieutenant Duxberry was good tempered, but exceedingly conceited, and casting about always to make himself friends at head-quarters. One of his peculiar conceits was that his name, Duxberry, was a corruption of Duc de Berri, from whom he supposed himself to be in some extraordinary way descended. I found out afterwards that, at the beginning of the war, he was an assistant in a drug store at Montgomery, Ala., and that he was born somewhere in Massachusetts.

Longstreet pressed through Thoroughfare Gap and reached Manassas just in time to save Jackson from being overwhelmed there. I knew but little of what was going on, and did not see much of the great battle itself. Here I made my first capture in the shape of a Gatling gun which had been abandoned by the enemy, and what was of more importance, I secured a commissary wagon containing a barrel of ground coffee.

The army now advanced to the Potomac, which we crossed at Point of Rocks; the bands playing “Maryland, my Maryland!” There was no cause to complain any longer of a lack of provisions, and we were able to buy whatever we wanted with Confederate money at fair prices. After resting a day or two at Hagerstown, where we completed the equipment of our mess, we moved rapidly to South Mountain, where we had a brisk fight, and were driven back. This was on August 15th, I think. Late at night I rode back to the camp to get some supper, but had hardly told the cook to make the necessary preparations when an order came from General Longstreet to me to take charge of the Ordnance trains of the corps, and move them to Williamsport. The order was imperative, and I was directed to move as rapidly as possible.

At about ten o’clock at night I started. It was intensely dark and the roads were rough. Towards morning I entered the Hagerstown and Williamsport Turnpike, where I found a cavalry picket. The officer in charge asked me to move the column as quickly as I could, and to keep the trains well closed up. I asked him if the enemy were on the road, and he told me that it was entirely clear, and that he had pickets out in every direction. It was only a few miles now to Williamsport, and I could see the camp-fires of our troops across the river. I was hungry, sleepy and tired, and the prospect of camp and supper in an hour seemed the summit of bliss. I was forty or fifty yards ahead of the column, when a voice from the roadside called out “halt!” The gloss was not yet off my uniform, and I could not suppose that such a command, shotted with a big oath, was intended for me. In a moment it was repeated. I quickly rode to the side of the road in the direction of the voice, and found myself at the entrance of a narrow lane, and there adown it were horses and men in a line that stretched out far beyond my vision. To the trooper who was nearest to me I said indignantly: “How dare you halt an officer in this manner.” The reply was to the point: “Surrender, and dismount! You are my prisoner!” Almost before the words were uttered I was surrounded, and found that I had ridden right into the midst of a body of Yankee cavalry, numbering about two thousand, who had escaped from Harper’s Ferry that night to avoid the surrender which was to take place in the morning. I was placed under guard on the roadside, and as the trains came up they were halted, and the men who were with them were quietly captured. In a short time the column moved off in the direction of the Pennsylvania line. I was allowed to ride my own horse. By the side of each team a Federal soldier rode, and, by dint of cursing the negro drivers and beating the mules with their swords, the cavalrymen contrived to get the jaded animals along at a gallop. While we were halted, one of my Sergeants had knocked the linchpins out of the wheels of the leading wagons, in the hope that this would delay the march. The wheels came off and the wagons were upset, but a squad of men dismounted instantly, threw the wagons out of the road, and set fire to them, so that there was no halt of consequence. I had a cavalryman on each side of me, and tried vainly to get an opportunity to slip off into the woods.