White's Ford

White's Ford. Crossing the Potomac. , After Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's smashing victory over Union Gen. John Pope at the Second Battle of Manassas, Lee decided to invade Maryland to reap the fall harvest, gain Confederate recruits, earn foreign recognition of the Confederacy, and perhaps compel the Union to sue for peace. The Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River on September 4, 1862. Lee divided his force, detaching Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's corps to capture Harper's Ferry. At Antietam Creek on September 17, Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac fought Lee's men to a bloody draw. Lee retreated to Virginia September 18-19., The sound of popular music was in the air as men and horses splashed across the Potomac River into Maryland at White's Ford on September 5-6, 1862. They belonged to Gen. James Longstreet's and Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's command in Gen. Robert E. Lee's 40,000-man Army of Northern Virginia, as well as part of Gen. J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry. Other elements, with 246 cannons crossed elsewhere., As the 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 put to music by Jennie Cary of Baltimore. The troops and artillery marched north on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath to cross the Monocacy River over the Monocacy Aqueduct. The cavalry spread south and east to screen the infantry from Union attacks and posted companies at sites in an arc south of Frederick from Poolesville to New Market., Jennie Cary and her sister Hetty first sang "Maryland, My Maryland" to Confederate soldiers camped near Manassas, Virginia, in July 1861. An elite "Monument Street" girl in Baltimore, Hetty Cary soon became the "reigning Belle of Richmond" and married Confederate Gen. John Pegram in December 1864. He was killed three weeks later.