After Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, he led the Army of Northern Virginia west to the Shenandoah Valley, then north through central Maryland into Pennsylvania, while Union Gen. George G. Meade, who replaced Gen. Joseph Hooker on June 28, pursued with the Army of the Potomac and Confederate cavalry commander Gen. J.E.B. Stuart cut Federal communications and rail lines and captured supplies. The armies met at Gettysburg on July 1 in a battle neither commander had planned to fight there, and after three days the defeated Confederates retreated across the Potomac River into Virginia on July 14. During this campaign, Lee ordered Gen. A.P. Hill on June 16, 1863, to take the Sperryville road as far as Woodville and then turn toward Chester Gap and Front Royal. Confederate forces often marched and camped along the Thornton Gap Turnpike, present-day U.S. Route 522, a hard-surfaced road from Culpeper Court House through Sperryville to the gap that was well suited for artillery and large bodies of troops. In June and July 1863, about half of Lee's army paused near Woodville on the way to Pennsylvania and after the Battle of Gettysburg. Earlier, in November 1862, Gen. James Longstreet's corps passed here during the retreat after the Battle of Antietam, and later elements of Gen. A.P. Hill's corps camped here during the Bristoe Station Campaign in October 1863. During the Gettysburg Campaign, British Lt. Col. Arthur J.L. Fremantle of the Coldstream Guards accompanied Lee's army and stopped here on the march to Pennsylvania, writing on June 20, 1863, that the country was magnificent but that two years of supporting large armies had brought severe suffering to this part of Virginia. Sgt. Yancey B. Malone of Co. H, 6th North Carolina Infantry, recalled that while passing through Woodville the 6th North Carolina Band played "Bonnie Blew [sic] Flag."