There was great rejoicing throughout the South. It gave the leaders and fomenters of the rebellion arguments which they used to prove that the Yankees were cowards, and would not fight, and that the North would soon be a conquered nation.
It was a sad sight at Poolesville. Tidings of the disaster reached the place during the evening. The wounded began to arrive. It was heart-rending to hear their accounts of the scene at the river bank, when the line gave way. Hundreds of soldiers came into the lines naked, having thrown away everything to enable them to swim the river. The night set in dark and stormy. After swimming the river, they had crowded along the Maryland shore, through briers, thorns, and thistles, stumbling over fallen trees and stones in the darkness, while endeavoring to reach their encampments. Many were found in the woods in the morning, having fallen through exhaustion.
Thus by the incompetency of those in command, a terrible disaster was brought about. General McClellan and General Stone were both severely censured by the people for this needless, inexcusable sacrifice. Grave doubts were entertained in regard to the loyalty of General Stone, for he permitted the wives of officers in the Rebel service to pass into Maryland and return to Virginia, with packages and bundles, whenever they pleased, and he ordered his pickets to heed any signals they might see from the Rebels, and to receive any packages they might send, and forward them to his quarters.[3]
[Footnote 3: Testimony before Committee of Congress.]
When these facts became known to the War Department, General Stone was arrested and confined in Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, but he was subsequently released, having no charges preferred against him.
Lieutenant Putnam of the Twentieth Massachusetts, who was so young that he was called the "boy soldier," was mortally wounded in the battle, was carried to Poolesville, where he died the next day. He came of noble blood. His father was descended from the ancestor of old General Putnam, who fought the French and Indians on the shores of Lake Champlain, who did not stop to unyoke his oxen in the field, when he heard of the affair at Lexington, and hastened to meet the enemy.