At the outbreak of the Civil War, Leesburg was a prosperous Southern town of about 2000 strategically located on the border between the Union and Confederacy, and by war’s end it had endured bombardment, the passage of Union and Confederate armies, Federal occupation, disintegration of civil authority, frequent raids, and multiple combats in its streets. Leesburg men supported the Virginia Secession Ordinance on May 23, 1861, by a vote of 400-22, and local units including the Loudoun Artillery, Leesburg Cavalry, Loudoun Guard, and Potomac Greys entered Confederate service in April and May 1861. At the Battle of Ball’s Bluff on October 21, 1861, many local men of the 8th Virginia were casualties, wounded from both sides were placed in homes and public buildings, Union prisoners were held on the courthouse lawn, and cavalry corporal Elijah V. White engineered the capture of 350 Union soldiers. During the winter of 1861-1862, General D. H. Hill oversaw completion of Forts Evans, Beauregard, and Johnston on the heights surrounding Leesburg, while the Richmond Howitzers and Mississippi troops built winter camps. As Confederate forces fell back on Richmond on March 4, 1862, supplies, mills, bridges, and other items helpful to the Union were burned, and later that month Union troops under Colonel John Geary seized Leesburg, ordered impressments of citizens into the Union army, and prompted many Southerners to take the oath of allegiance to avoid impressments. On September 2, 1862, Colonel Thomas Munford and the 2nd Virginia Cavalry surprised and routed a mixed Federal force at Mile Hill, and from September 4 through 6 General Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia through Leesburg on the way to Maryland and held a conference there with Generals Jackson, Longstreet, and Stuart. On September 14, 1862, Colonel Judson Kilpatrick bombarded Leesburg after encountering Captain Elijah V. White’s Comanches, and after a sharp fight in which White was badly wounded, both sides retreated. The Union Army of the Potomac later passed through Loudoun County and Leesburg repeatedly, including the crossing of more than 100,000 troops at Edwards Ferry east of town between June 17 and 28, 1863, and on June 19 three Union soldiers were executed in town for desertion. After his raid on Washington, General Jubal Early’s army crossed back into Virginia in June 1864, and General H. C. Wright’s Sixth Corps caught up with them at Leesburg, shelling Early’s rear guard while cavalry patrols clashed. During the last two years of the war, Federal cavalry repeatedly raided Leesburg in search of Colonel John Mosby’s Partisan Rangers, and in one 1864 incident the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry tried to surprise Confederates at a wedding in town but was ambushed instead, leaving two killed and several wounded.