White’s Ford

A wing of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia commanded by General James Longstreet, along with part of General J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, crossed into Maryland just south of here on September 5-6, 1862, while other parts of the 40,000-man force supported by 246 cannons crossed elsewhere. As Confederates forded the Potomac River, regimental bands played “Maryland, My Maryland,” a poem written by James Ryder Randall after the Baltimore Riot of April 1861 and set to music by Jennie Cary of Baltimore. It was first sung to Confederate soldiers camped near Manassas, Virginia, in July 1861 by Jeannie and her sister Hetty, a Baltimore “Monument Street” girl who later became the “reigning Belle of Richmond” and married Confederate General John Pegram in December 1864 before he was killed three weeks later. From here, the troops and artillery marched north on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath to cross the Monocacy River over the Monocacy Aqueduct, while the cavalry spread out south and east to screen the invading Confederate infantry from Union attack and posted companies in an arc south of Frederick from Poolesville to New Market.

Maryland · United States