Market & Patrick Streets

Market and Patrick Streets. "Scarcely any possibility of crossing the street". Frederick found itself occupied alternatively by Confederate and Union armies during the Civil War. Citizens who frequented this "Square Corner" of Market and Patrick Streets saw Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia march west from here on Patrick Street, the National Road, during Lee's September 1862 Maryland Campaign. They also saw Union Gen. George B. McClellan lead his army through town in pursuit. This first Southern invasion culminated in the Battles of South Mountain and Antietam., On June 28, 1863, while newly appointed commander of the Army of the Potomac Gen. George G. Meade drew up plans for a pending confrontation with General Robert E. Lee, tens of thousands of Union troops encamped in the vicinity of Frederick. Within a day they headed north again, to the battle that erupted at Gettysburg, Pa. "All day Saturday the cavalry was passing up Market Street.... Saturday night we were kept awake by the noisy wagon trains and such a Sunday I never spent," wrote Union Gen. John F. Reynolds' cousin Catherine Reynolds Cramer, a Frederick resident. "There was scarcely any possibility of crossing the street for the countless multitudes who were pouring through.", Future mayor Jacob Englebrecht noted in his diary the next day that he "could not pass through Market Street....The streets are chucked full of wagons and cavalry and infantry... I should supposed say 70 or 80,000."