ttle horn,
Six score and eight we rode at morn
Six score and eight of Southern born,
All tried in love and labor.

Full in the sun at Hamilton,
We met the South's invaders;
Who, over fifteen hundred strong,
'Mid blazing homes had marched along
All night, with Northern shout and song,
To crush the rebel raiders.

Down Loudoun lanes with streaming manes
We spurred in wild March weather;
And all along our war-scarred way
The graves of Southern heroes lay,
Our guide posts to revenge that day,
As we rode grim together.

Old tales still tell some miracle
Of saints in holy writing--
But who shall say why hundreds fled
Before the few that Mosby led,
Unless the noblest of our dead
Charged with us then when fighting.

While Yankee cheers still stunned our ears,
Of troops at Harper's Ferry,
While Sheridan led on his Huns,
And Richmond rocked to roaring guns,
We felt the South still had some sons,
She would not scorn to bury.

_Battle of Leesburg_[32] ("_Ball's Bluff_"[33]).

"After the first battle of Manassas, Col. Eppa Hunton had been ordered
to reoccupy Leesburg with his regiment, the Eighth Virginia. A little
later Col. William Barksdale's Thirteenth Mississippi, Col. W.S.
Featherstone's Seventeenth Mississippi, a battery, and four companies
of cavalry under Col. W.H. Jenifer were sent to the same place, and
these were organized into the Seventh Brigade of the Confederate Army
of the Potomac, which, early in August, was put under command of
Brig.-Gen. Nathan G. Evans, who had been promoted for his brave
conduct July 21st. General Beauregard's object in locating this strong
force at Leesburg was to guard his left flank from a Federal attack by
way of several good roads that led from the fords of the upper
Potomac, near that town, directly to his Bull Run encampment; to watch
the large Federal force that McClellan had located on the opposite
side of the Potomac; to keep up a connection with the Confederate
force in the lower Shenandoah Valley by a good turnpike that led from
Leesburg across the Blue Ridge, and to save for his army the abundant
supplies of the fertile County of Loudoun.

"On the 15th of October (1861) General Banks' division of the Federal
army was located at Darnestown, Md., about fifteen miles due east from
Leesburg, with detachments at Point of Rocks, Sandy Hook,
Wi