One of the Greatest Victories of the War

Wherein Centreville is captured without very much blood

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William W. Averell

The morning of March 11, 1862 dawned "clear and mild", according to the daily log kept by Colonel William Averell's 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry. "Beautiful day," it recorded, but perhaps the most beautiful thing about it for the Keystone State men is that they were camped inside the rebel fortifications at Centreville.

Since March 9, the day after Lincoln's order assigning corps commanders to the Army of the Potomac, Maj. General George B. McClellan's army had been on the move, slowly at first, but gaining speed. Averell's Pennsylvanians had been at the front of that movement.

Company F, which had been part of the tangle with the North Carolina cavalry on the road to Hunter's Mill back in November, had a new captain on March 9, George Johnson, formerly second lieutenant of Company L. Averell had spent the winter as a holy terror to his officers, most of whom he found deficient, to either provoke them to improve their abilities or to drive them from the service. Johnson's predecessor had not passed the test, but the young second lieutenant had been impressive enough to win a double promotion.

The day of his promotion, Captain Johnson was put through the nerve-wracking ordeal of an inspection. Whether Johnson was beside himself or cool and collected, he was responsible not only for making sure all his men turned up in perfect uniform, but then performed the drills asked of them. The inspector was Brig. General Fitz John Porter, leader of one of McClellan's infantry divisions and a known protege of the general-in-chief. Fortunately, it went well:

The review and inspection ended, the officers were summoned in front of the Colonel's quarters. General Porter addressed the officers briefly, congratulated them upon the fine appearance of the troops, and gave utterance to his feelings in remarks of a most flattering character.

Hot Haste

Wherein a multiethnic force clears Hunter's Mill of rebels

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Much has been written about the families that were torn apart by the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, for example, had four brothers-in-law from his wife's family that all fought in the Confederate Army, and one more that married Mary Todd Lincoln's sister. But it was also a war marked by the unfamiliar, one in which people from backgrounds quite different from the Anglo-Saxon or Scots-Irish backgrounds that make up a large part of the warfare we most often remember.

The 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry was one such unit. It had been recruited for three years at the beginning of July 1861 by Max Friedman, a German Jew who had immigrated to Philadelphia when his liberal politics left him on the wrong side of the '48. His key staff had similar backgrounds, and they were able to quickly recruit men among other German immigrants, who tended to be patriotic and particularly anti-slavery (not the least because slave labor undercut their wages). Freidman was made colonel, and named his regiment of cavalry the Cameron Dragoons after then-Secretary of War Simon Cameron, a favorite Pennsylvania politician of the immigrant community in Philadelphia.

Cameron didn't return the respect immediately, choosing not to muster the regiment into service, until the loss at Bull Run expanded the number of authorized regiments of volunteers. In deference to Pennsylvania's odd enumeration system, it was renumbered the 65th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment, but it continued to be called the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry or Cameron's Dragoons. After traveling to Washington, the regiment encamped on 7th Street, not far from today's Verizon Center, and Friedman named a Jewish regimental chaplain, to the ire of the YMCA and several Members of Congress. By February 1862, Friedman was still in hot water, and spending less and less time running his regiment, and more defending his Jewishness against Christian zealots.

So on February 7, it was not Friedman that led the regiment out for their mission, but Major Joseph L. Moss, who was acting as his second in command since the resignation of Lt. Colonel Philip Becker in November. Not much data is available on Moss without a deeper search, but his name indicates that he could be of Anglo-Saxon or East German Jewish descent, both of which are possible in the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry. The regiment was divided up into five squadrons of two companies each, under himself, Major Edward Boteler, Captain William Heuser, Captain D. P. Hagameister, and Captain Jacob Wilson. Wilson is definitely an English or Scottish name, though like Moss not enough information is readily available to know Jacob's background. He may even have been among the significant minority or the 5th's Irish-born members, of which there were quite a few in his Company F.