After Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's victory over Union Gen. John Pope at the Second Battle of Manassas, Lee invaded Maryland in hopes of reaping the fall harvest, gaining Confederate recruits, earning foreign recognition of the Confederacy, and perhaps compelling the Union to sue for peace. The Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River on September 4, 1862, and Lee divided his force, sending Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's corps to capture Harpers Ferry. In the early evening darkness of September 11, 1862, Confederate Col. Thomas L. Rosser of the 5th Virginia Cavalry led several hundred cavalrymen on a sudden raid into Westminster after leaving New Market early that morning. They entered on Liberty Street, then called Goose Pond Lane, accompanied by artillery Capt. James Breathed, a Maryland native, with one cannon. During the occupation, the gun stood at the fork of West Main Street and Pennsylvania Avenue facing the railroad. Southern-sympathizing townspeople warmly greeted the troopers, and Rosser became the center of attention, giving citizens keepsakes including uniform buttons, signatures, and hairs cut from his horse's mane, a horse he had captured from John Pope a few weeks earlier. Col. John Brooke Boyle welcomed Rosser and his staff to dinner at his home, which served as Rosser's headquarters for the night, while the rest of the command bivouacked on John Street. During the night, the Odd Fellows Hall at 140 East Main Street, then serving as the armory for the Carroll Guards Militia, was broken into and its contents vandalized. The next day the Confederates rode out of Westminster toward South Mountain. Days later, at Antietam Creek on September 17, George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac fought Lee's army to a bloody draw, and Lee retreated to Virginia on September 18-19. Boyle's house has been known as Rosser's Choice ever since.