White’s Ford
Crossing the Potomac
A wing of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia commanded by Gen. James Longstreet, as well as part of Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, crossed into Maryland just south of here on September 5-6, 1862. Other parts of the 40,000-man force, supported by 246 cannons, crossed elsewhere.
As the Confederates forded the Potomac River, regimental bands played “Maryland, My Maryland,” a poem written by James Ryder Randall after the Baltimore Riot of April 1861, and put to music by Jennie Cary of Baltimore. It was first sung to Confederate soldiers camped near Manassas, Virginia in July 1861, by Jeannie and her sister Hetty. An elite “Monument Street” girl in Baltimore, Hetty soon became the “reigning Belle of Richmond” and married Confederate Gen. John Pegram in December 1864. He was killed 3 weeks later.
Thou wilt not cower in the dust, / Maryland, my Maryland! / Thy beaming sword shall never rust, / Maryland, my Maryland!
From here, the troops and artillery marched north on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath to cross the Monocacy River over the Monocacy Aqueduct. The cavalry spread out south and east to screen the invading Confederate infantry from Union attack and posted companies at sites in an arc south of Frederick from Poolesville to New Market.
Marker can be reached from Martinsburg Road 2.2 miles north of Whites Ferry Road (Maryland Route 107).
Courtesy hmdb.org
