In May 1862, Union Gen. George B. McClellan led the Army of the Potomac up the Peninsula to the gates of Richmond. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia in June and planned a counterattack. On June 12, Gen. J.E.B. Stuart led 1,200 cavalrymen on a three-day reconnaissance that discovered the Union right was unsecured, giving Lee vital information for the offensive that became the Seven Days’ Battles on June 26. Early in the evening of June 13, with Lt. William Robbins of the 9th Virginia Cavalry commanding the advance units, the column entered Talleysville, passed a Union hospital with about 150 patients in William Talley’s house, and found a Union sutler at Baltimore Store at the crossroads. The Confederates took canned meats, sausages, pickles, preserves, fruits, cakes, crackers, candy, wine, and spirits from the sutler’s stocks, and members of Stuart’s command later recalled the stop as a moment of relief and revelry. At 8:30 P.M., Stuart arrived and ordered a halt of three and a half hours for rest and to allow scattered detachments to close up. At midnight, the column moved on toward the Chickahominy River with prisoners mounted double on captured mules and horses, while Stuart and many of his men slept in the saddle and pursuing Union cavalry halted at Tunstall’s four miles behind them.
