On June 27, 1863, Union Gen. Winfield S. Hancock’s II Corps of the Army of the Potomac camped at Monocacy Junction near Frederick. The next day, Gen. George G. Meade assumed command of the army and planned to march it through Frederick and Carroll County to positions along Pipe Creek, where he intended to engage Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia after it had marched through Maryland into Pennsylvania. Hancock was ordered to march northeast toward Frizzelburg at 4 a.m. on June 29, but his corps did not move until four hours later because the orders were misplaced. After a 32-mile march under a broiling sun, II Corps arrived at Uniontown at 10 p.m., several miles short of its objective. A New Yorker observed that Uniontown was a pretty secluded village, patriotic, but paralyzed by the nearness of the rebel army. When residents told Hancock that Gen. J. E. B. Stuart and his Confederate cavalry were camped four miles away in Westminster, he informed Meade so that an attack could be launched. Union cavalry commander Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, however, persuaded Meade that the report was wrong, and two of his brigades occupied the town. In fact, Hancock was correct, and Stuart, unaware of the Federal infantry in Uniontown, might have been defeated had the Federals attacked on the morning of June 30.