[163] _War of the Rebellion; Official Records_, Vol. 27, p. 118.
[164] "Reports Army of Northern Virginia," from June 1862 to Dec. 1862. Vol. II, pp. 99, 187, 211, 246, 282, etc.
While the battle of Antietam was being so hotly fought in nearby Maryland, Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, advancing from Washington with ten companies of Federal cavalry, reached Leesburg where there still remained a small Confederate force made up of Company A of the 6th Virginia Cavalry and about forty Mississippi infantrymen under Captain Gibson, then acting as Provost Marshal of the town. Being largely outnumbered, the Confederates were about to retire when they were joined by Captain E. V. White and thirty of his men. Persuading the soldiers already there to make an effort to hold the town, White and his men exchanged shots with the Federal advance guard; but finding that Kilpatrick was bringing a battery forward, the Confederates retreated through the town's streets. Kilpatrick, however, had already trained his cannon upon Leesburg, thereby subjecting it to its first and only artillery bombardment and greatly terrifying the civilian population. Myers records that "shrieking shells came crashing through walls and roofs" of Leesburg's buildings. The Federal report avers that but a few shells were fired "over the town."[165] After this brief artillery fire, Kilpatrick sent a detachment of his 10th New York Cavalry through Leesburg's streets who came in touch with the Confederates on the town's outskirts. Here Captain White, about to lead his cavalry in a charge, was severely wounded by the fire of the Confederate Infantry and as his men, in retreat, carried him to Hamilton, the Confederate Infantry also fell back, leaving the town to Kilpatrick. By way of souvenir of this little engagement, there still remains a bullet-hole in the front door of the house on the south side of East Market street then occupied by the late Burr W. Harrison but now the residence of his grandson, the Hon. Charles F. Harrison, Commonwealth's Attorney of Loudoun. According to the official Federal report, already quoted, the Confederate "force at Leesburg was principally comprised of convalescents and cavalry sent to escort them. The whole country from Warrenton to Leesburg is filled with sick soldiers abandoned on the wayside by the enemy."