Wherein a young captain tries to make his name
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As the excitement (or misery, depending on your point of view) of the Grand Review of the North's Army of the Potomac at Bailey's Cross-Roads wore off, things were getting back to normal in the division of Brig. General Fitz John Porter. Porter, one of general-in-chief Maj. General George McClellan's favorites, had played a prominent role in the review, only a day after men in his division had come under attack by Confederate cavalry near Fall's Church. The men had done well and driven off the scouting expedition of cavalry before they could determine more about his force structure, but it certainly must have underscored for Porter the need to be more vigilant himself.
So he stepped up patrols by his own cavalry. In 1861, the prevailing opinion on cavalry was that it was for intelligence gathering or counterintelligence work, and for timely attacks on your opponent's flanks or rear. So McClellan had split his cavalry (and artillery, too) up among his divisions, to give each division commander a scouting force. Porter had two regiments of Pennsylvanian horsemen, the 3rd and the 8th, who divided up responsibility for scouting beyond the picket line (the extent of the area considered "safe" Union territory, called colloquially "the lines").
Mostly men from Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania, the 3rd Regiment was commanded by Colonel William W. Averell. When the 3rd had been formed originally, it had been deemed a Kentucky regiment. Pennsylvania had exceeded its quota for sending troops to the Federal government, and some of Pennsylvania's excess troops had been bled off by assigning them to represent states' whose loyalties were questionable, such as Kentucky. But after Bull Run, the regiment had been reclaimed by Pennsylvania, and mustered into Federal service as the 3rd Pennsylvania (though in the Keystone State itself it would confusingly be known as the 60th Pennsylvania, because of a decision not to enumerate cavalry and infantry in separate sequences on the state books).
Averell was a U.S. Army cavalry officer and a former cavalry instructor, and had been asked by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin to take command of the rowdy unit and instill some discipline. Averell grouped the companies of the 3rd into squadrons of two each, helping him more tightly rule the regiment with an iron fist. At Camp Marcy, located a few miles south of Chain Bridge, the 3rd Pennsylvania learned discipline the hard way. Remembered the regiment historian, a member of Company B, "Our drills, mounted and dismounted, were incessant. Mutterings of dissatisfaction because of these were loud and unceasing."
