For six hours on Monday, July 6, 1863, combat raged in Hagerstown's town square and adjoining city blocks as Federal cavalry under Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick attacked a town crucial to Gen. Robert E. Lee's retreat to Virginia after Gettysburg, since losing this crossroads would seriously hamper Lee's access to the Potomac River. Just before noon Kilpatrick's division galloped north on Potomac Street and charged into three Virginia brigades, and both sides fed reinforcements into a wild melee of mounted charges and dismounted duels. The fighting lurched from street corner to street corner and ultimately became dismounted assaults from house to house, yard to yard, doorway to doorway, churchyard to churchyard, and gravestone to gravestone, until the arrival of Confederate infantry, Gen. Alfred Iverson's North Carolina brigade, finally compelled the Federals to abandon their effort to seize Hagerstown.
