Learning of the advance of this column, we broke camp at Gordonsville and marched to meet it, determined that Pope should see our faces when we met. We encountered our friend and commissary, Banks, at Cedar Mountain, where we were so persistent in presenting our faces to view that this part of Pope's army soon presented us a brief view of their backs and disappeared. In this battle I obtained the finest view of an engagement I ever had. Cedar Mountian is an isolated Knob with a broad, open country all around it. From this elevated position we could plainly see the two lines approach, and when they opened fire and engaged in deadly strife, how my heart ached for the result as I looked upon this living panorama of war, with the greatest possible anxiety for the success of our men. As long as they stood and fired at each other the result was in great doubt; but when our men raised the "Rebel Yell," and swept down among them in an old fashioned Confedrate charge, that settled it. The Federals were swept from the field and driven off in confusion, and Banks was made to honor another requisition from Jackson on his commissary department.It having been definitely ascertained that the army of McClellan was being withdrawn from the Peninsula and sent to Pope, General Lee began to transfer his army to the fields of Northern Virginia again. Jackson began one of his favorite movements to turn Pope's flank and get into his rear. To do this, we had to make a detour of sixty or seventy miles, sweeping around close to the foot of the Blue Ridge so as to turn his right flank. The march was a forced and vigorous one, so as to execute the movement before Pope could be apprised of our purpose. While marhcing up a river and about a mile from it, a regiment of the enemy crossed over, threw out a line of sharpshooters and began to reconnoiter our columns. They supposed, no doubt, that is was Mosby with his little battalion of bush-whackers, hanging on their flanks and annoying them, as was his custom, and they would run him off before he could do them any mischief. They struck our column at our brigade. We quickly faced into line and charged them, running them back to the river, into which they plunged precipitately as they came to it. We rushed down to the bank, where many were climbing up out of the river. We paid no attention to those climbing the other bank. We were rolling them back in the river at a fearful rate when we were ordered to join the coulmn and resume the march. We resumed our march and pressed forward with all the speed we could make. So rapidly did we move from place to place, always turning up at a place entirely unexpected by the enemy, that we were known as "Jackson's Foot Cavalry." In fact, we could on long marches outmarch the cavalry during the latter part of the war. They could ride off from us for the first few days, but their horses being thin, would soon become jaded and we would overtake them and march on by them in a week's time.
We made a complete success of turning Pope's flank and marched around into his rear. We struck the railroad at a place called Brandy Station, distant only three of four miles from Manassas Junction, at about 11 o'clock at night. We had been there but a few minutes when we heard the whistle of a train in the direction of Pope's army, and discovered it was coming upon us. We tried to tear up a rail from the track but did not succeed before the train came thundering by. We fired a volley into it as it sped towards Manassas Junction. Soon we heard another whistle coming form the same direction. This time we succeeded in getting some rails up and turned them so as to cause the engine to jump the track down a steep embankment. We then moved up the road a short distance, and as it came by we fired a volley into it. The engineer pulled the throttle wide open and gave his engine all the steam. When it struck the turned rails, it jumped clear out from the rails and buried itself in the earth at the foot of the embankment. The cars tumbled into piles, leaving not more than half the train standing on the track. Soon we heard another whistle, and moving up the road, greeted the train with a volley as it passed. The engineer did as the other, giving it all the speed he could, cut about half way through the cars standing on the track, scattering them in all directions and doubling up his own train into a jumbled mass. Soon we heard the whistle of another train, and treating it as we had the others, drove it headlong into the mass of wreckage that already on the track. The were all long trains of empty box cars, filled up with rough, board seats, and were transporting McCellan's troops to Pope. The first engine we ditched was called "The President," and had a very fair picture of President Lincoln painted on the steam dome, with one of our bullet holes through his head.
If we had struck the trains going the other way, they would have been full of troops, and we would have made a big haul of prisoners. The first train that succeeded in passing us reported at the junction, where there was a company of artillery that Mosby's gang had fired on it as it passed Brandy Station and they might look out for an attack before day. But for this warning, we would have caught the artillermen in their beds.
My regiment was sent forward to capture the junction, which we reached about 1 o'clock in the morning. The artillerymen, warned by the train that had escaped us, had their guns loaded with grape shot and canister and were in position waiting for us. Grape shot are iron balls about the size of marbles, and a 12 pound gun is loaded with about a half gallon of them. Canister is a tin can about the size of a three-pound tomato can, sealed up full of musket balls loaded into the cannon that way. When fired, the can is torn to pieces and the bullets scatter out. Marching up to a cannon loaded with grape and canister is rough medicine, but soldiers some times have to take it. We approached the station as silently and stealthly as we could and succeeded in covering behind some box cars standing on the track. We were wanting them to fire, knowing they would get a shot any way, but we were dreading the fire at the same time. They held their fire until we got within a hundred yards, but we could not see them well enough to shoot them, and they were waiting to see us plainly. Finally we made such a noise among the cars they thought we were charging, and fired all four of their guns. Forunately for us, their aim in the darkness was bad. Their grape shot and bullets went whistling over our heads, and no one was hurt. This was the opportunity we were wishing for. Their guns were now empty and we were careful not to give them time to load again. With a quick dash we were soon among them and made them all prisoners before they could reload their own guns. Having secured our prisoners and arranged for their safe keeping, we laid down and slept soundly until next morning.