Uniontown

Uniontown. “Patriotic, but Paralyzed”. On June 27, 1863, Union Gen. Winfield S. Hancock’s II Corps, Army of the Potomac camped at Monocacy Junction near Frederick. The next day, Gen. George G. Meade assumed command of the army and devised a plan to march it through Frederick and Carroll County to positions along Pipe Creek. There he planned to engage Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia which had marched through Maryland into Pennsylvania. , Hancock was ordered to march northeast toward Frizzelburg at 4 a.m. on June 29, but did not put his corps in motion until four hours later because the orders were misplaced. After a 32-mile march under a broiling sun, II Corps arrived here at 10 p.m., several miles short of its objective. A New Yorker observed that “Uniontown is a pretty secluded village, patriotic, but paralyzed just now by the nearness of the rebel army.” , When residents told Hancock that Gen. J. E. B. Stuart and his Confederate cavalry were camped four miles away in Westminster, he informed Meade so that an attack could be launched. Union cavalry commander Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, however, persuaded Meade that the report was wrong and two of his brigades occupied the town. In fact, it was Hancock who was correct, and Stuart, unaware of the Federal infantry in Uniontown, might have been defeated had the Federals attacked on the morning of June 30.