Visiting past triumphs

Today at Cedar Mountain: September 8, 1863

From the diary of Jed Hotchkiss.

"I started back at an early hour, going by Cedar Run to examine the route to the battle field and the location of Hudson’s Mill, where General Trimble was stopped by a mill pond. Found no obstacle there that he could have not overcome...General Early had a party at the Cedar Run battlefield fixing up the graves of our fallen. The hogs had been rooting there."

Hotchkiss was recreating the advance of the Confederates on that August, 1862 day. He comments that he cannot find the obstacle the Issac Trimble faced (the mill pond). Perhaps Trimble wrote his report on August 14, before he was seriously wounded at Groveton, and I could find no mention of a mill pond, so I am unsure of what Hotchkiss is referring to.

He mentions that Jubal Early had a detail of men fixing the graves of the Confederate fallen from the fight. It is interesting that in the year since the fight, in an area under control by the Southern army, the Confederates did not attempt to disinter the dead and ship them home for burial.