Wapping Heights

The last engagement of the Gettysburg Campaign took place here in Manassas Gap on July 23, 1863. Union Gen. George G. Meade and the Army of the Potomac pursued Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia as it retreated south through the Shenandoah Valley. "I start tomorrow to run another race with Lee," Meade wrote on July 14. During the next week, as Lee's men marched toward Chester Gap to escape to Central Virginia, Meade's soldiers followed east of the Blue Ridge in the Loudoun Valley.

On July 21, Union Gen. Wesley Merritt's cavalry, probing westward, approached Linden Station two miles behind you on the Manassas Gap Railroad. The 17th Virginia Infantry, including Company B (Warren Rifles), countered them here near the Wapping house that stands a quarter mile in front of you, the only time a Warren County infantry unit fought on its home soil.

At dawn two days later, Confederate Col. Edward J. Walker, 3rd Georgia Infantry, led a brigade here to guard the army's left flank as it passed through Front Royal. At 10 A.M., Union Gen. Wil1iam H. French arrived with almost 20,000 men but did not attack until 2 P.M. The outnumbered Confederates retreated west as six guns under Lt. Col. Thomas H. Carter held off the Federals (Excelsior Brigade, Gen. Francis B. Spinola), who rallied and flanked



Walker. The Confederates retreated toward Front Royal under cover of Carter's fire. On July 24, the Federals reconnoitered to Front Royal but found that the Confederates had escaped. The fight here was over.

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Lt. Walter Scott Roy, Co. B, 17th Virginia Infantry, was captured here on July 21, 1888, with 15 other members of the 17th. He told his captors he would escape. The next night he rolled away from the campfire, took a cavalry horse, and rejoined his unit the night of July 30 near Culpeper.

Lucy Buck, a Front Royal diarist, wrote of the 17th Virginia Infantry that it had "succeeded in repulsing a body much larger than their own of dismounted Cavalry—old U.S. regulars. Huzzah! Bless our glorious 17th! How they have longed ever since the war for a brush with the foe in the Valley and near their homes, and now that wish has been gratified, they've whipped them bravely and well."

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Camp Dismal Hollow
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