At home or in the ranks, throughout this trying period of civil strife, her people, with no notable exceptions, remained liberal and brave and constant, albeit they probably suffered more real hardships and deprivations than any other community of like size in the Southland. There were few Confederate troops for its defense, and the Federals held each neighborhood responsible for all attacks made in its vicinity, often destroying private property as a punishment. Both armies, prompted either by fancied military necessity or malice, burned or confiscated valuable forage crops and other stores, and nearly every locality, at one time or another, witnessed depredation, robbery, murder, arson, and rapine. Several towns were shelled, sacked, and burned, but the worst damage was done the country districts by raiding parties of Federals. Much of the destruction is now seen to have been unnecessary from a military point of view. Whole armies were subsisted on the products of Loudoun's fruitful acres. Opposing forces, sometimes only detachments and roving bands, but quite as often battalions, regiments, brigades, and even whole divisions were never absent from the County and the clash of swords and fire of musketry were an ever-present clamor and one to which Loudoun ears early became accustomed. Also, there were times when the main bodies of one or the other of both armies were encamped wholly or in part within her limits, as in September, 1862, when the triumphant army of Lee, on the eve of the first Maryland campaign, was halted at Leesburg and stripped of all superfluous transportation, broken-down horses, and wagons and batteries not supplied with good horses being left behind;[30] again, in June, 1863, when Hooker was being held in bounds with his great army stretched from Manassas, near Bull Run, to Leesburg, near the Potomac; and yet again, in July, 1863, when Lee's army, falling back from Maryland after the battle of Gettysburg, was followed by the Federal forces under General Meade, who crossed the Potomac and advanced through Loudoun. [Footnote 30: On the 5th day of September, to the martial strains of "Maryland, My Maryland" from every band in the army, and with his men cheering and shouting with delight, Jackson forded the Potomac at Edwards' Ferry (Loudoun County), where the river was broad but shallow, near the scene of Evan's victory over the Federals in the previous October, and where Wayne had crossed his Pennsylvania brigade in marching to the field of Yorktown, in 1781.] General Early, after the short and bloody battle of Monocacy, and following his invasion of Maryland and demonstration against Washington, recrossed the Potomac at White's Ford, July 14, 1864, and, resting near Leesburg, on the 16th marched to the Shenandoah valley by way of Leesburg and Purcellville, through Snicker's Gap of the Blue Ridge, with Jackson's Cavalry in advance.