‘SHOOT AND BE DAMNED’
It was likely a familiar outing for the men. Take a day to go have a few drinks at the end of the week, and then head home and get ready for the Monday workday. But things were far from ordinary in southern Frederick County on July 21, 1861. The First Battle of Bull Run was raging in Manassas, Va., some 40 miles to the south, signaling the true beginning of an American bloodbath. And for the past month, Union regiments had been marching into Maryland’s Potomac River bottomlands. One of those regiments was the three-month 1st New Hampshire Infantry, which had been formed in May and was in a brigade commanded by Colonel Charles P. Stone.
The 1st was in the 7th Brigade of the Department of Pennsylvania, commanded by Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson, hastily formed to protect Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Sources differ as to who the 1st was brigaded with, but in the and in the regiment’s 1890s history, it appears the New Englanders were sent with the 9th New York,
