After a good breakfast, our brigade under Chambliss took the road for Hagerstown. Our regiment was sent forward to ascertain if the enemy was there, and to communicate with Colonel Chambliss. We found no enemy there, and this information was sent back. While our pickets were being posted, however, several regiments of the enemy were discovered approaching from the southeast on the road which entered the town by the Female College. The greater part of the brigade having gotten up, we were instructed to tole the enemy in. We had scarcely time to join the picket on the College road, under Lieutenant Davis, of Company G, before the enemy was discovered coming fast enough. This picket held their ground until the leading squadron charged them, and then wheeled and retreated. Colonel J. Lucius Davis had drawn up his regiment—the Tenth—in line from north to south, on the main street leading through the town, and directly across that on which the pickets were retreating. These men, intermixed with the leading files of the charging enemy, came at full speed into contact with the men of the Tenth Regiment. Colonel Davis, spurring his horse forward, ordered a charge. His horse was soon shot, and fell beneath him, and the Colonel was seen defending himself with his sabre. The regiment was soon moving back up the main street. There was, however, no panic. The Tenth quickly halted and faced about. Our whole force was now ordered back to the hill above the town. Several of the enemy who followed us up Main street were shot, or cut down with the sabre.
On elevated ground beyond the town we found several companies of our infantry, some of the men posted behind stone fences, and some in the yard of a house beside the 'pike. Our men with carbines were here ordered to dismount, and were sent back to dislodge the enemy from the town. Captain Haynes commanded, and, though it was a critical undertaking, it was very handsomely accomplished. While Haynes and his men occupied the inclosed space about the
