On the morning of September 15, 1862, Union cavalry under Capt. Elon Farnsworth skirmished in Boonsboro with Fitzhugh Lee's 9th Virginia Cavalry, the rear guard of the Confederate retreat from South Mountain. During the melee Lee was unhorsed and lay dazed in a gutter, narrowly escaping capture, and his troops made another delaying stand at Keedysville Road. According to several reports, some residents of Boonsboro, a pro-Union town, fired from their windows at the retreating Confederates. It was the second day of fighting in the Boonsboro region, after the Union Army of the Potomac had compelled the Army of Northern Virginia on September 14 to defend Fox's, Turner's, and Crampton's Gaps on South Mountain, while Confederate troops crowded Boonsboro's streets as they prepared to defend those strategic passes. The fighting of September 14 also directly affected John Christian Brining, whose cabinet shop stood here, when Confederate troops brought him the body of Gen. Samuel Garland, mortally wounded after Union forces attacked his outnumbered North Carolinians at Fox's Gap, and demanded that he make a coffin so Garland's body could be sent to Lynchburg, Va.