Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general , United States army : volume 1

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[389] part of the army was waiting to see just what Lee would attempt next, and when the weather was so warm in the Goose Creek Valley that I considered it too hot for campaigning; while aids and orderlies were skipping from corps to corps, with great difficulty and danger to life, through a country infested by Mosby's guerrillas, in order to keep us mutually informed and properly instructed, Pleasonton and Stuart were acting like two combatants playing and fencing with small swords. Neither wished to hasten a battle. Stuart took a stand at Middleburg. Pleasonton cautiously approached, skirmished, and moved as if to turn Stuart by the left. Stuart declined the close quarters, and fell back southward. But, as if a little ashamed of backing off, the early morning of the 19th found Stuart in a good defensive attitude west of Middleburg.

Pleasonton made a vigorous attack. For eight miles there was a running fight till Stuart had concentrated his forces on the last ridge at Ashby's Gap-the pass of the Blue Ridge. Here he saw the columns of Lee slowly in motion toward the north.

My pencil note dated June 22, 1863, indicated the position of the Army of the Potomac to be: the Eleventh Corps at Goose Creek, not far from Leesburg, Va.; the Fifth, still under General Meade, somewhere near Adlie. The Second Corps had been pushed out from Centreville to Thoroughfare Gap. The remainder of the army was not far from the Eleventh Corps. General Hooker was endeavoring to get from Halleck and Stanton another fair-sized corps. It was to be a cooperating force, to move up rapidly on the eastern side of the Potomac. It could check cavalry raids like those of Jenkins, who, having preceded