officers and men, and it becoming evident that they could no longer hold the enemy at bay, Colonel Gilmor turned to this handful and exclaimed, “We’ll go at them again,” but had not moved five steps, the battalion at his heels, before he dropped his pistol and wheeled around, the blood streaming from his neck, and galloped off, saying as he did so, “I’m killed.” Seeing the folly of remaining longer, the command retired upon the infantry, which easily repulsed the enemy’s cavalry. This was the last order to charge given that day, and most faithfully was it obeyed, even by twenty against a thousand. This is a correct statement of the matter, and it is much to be regretted that Colonel Gilmor should be the only man who ever preferred such a charge or cast a reflection upon the fair fame of the First Maryland, every man of which was a hero of an hundred battles, and would follow where any man dared to lead. In this desperate fight I have to record the death of the gallant Lieutenant Henry Blackiston, of company B, who fell while performing prodigies of valor. Poor fellow, he was universally beloved, and his death deeply regretted by his companions. After this affair, great dissatisfaction was produced in the First Maryland by an order of General Early’s consolidating the command, then very much reduced, with Gilmor’s irregular cavalry, and placing the whole under that officer. The entire battalion remonstrated against what they conceived to be the injustice done them, and all the officers tendered their resignations except one, and that one acted upon the conviction that resignation was not the proper remedy of the wrong, which he condemned as fully as any one. None of the resignations were accepted, when the objection to the consolidation was urged at the Department in Richmond so earnestly that the order was revoked, and the command severed from the connection with Gilmor, and returned to its original status. Soon after Captain G. W. Dorsey was assigned to the command of the battalion, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of the lamented Ridgely Brown. Major R. C. Smith, who had been permanently disabled in the fight at Greenland Gap, was retired, and the vacancy thus occasioned not afterwards filled.