On the evening of August 21, Stuart suggested a plan that might give Lee the opportunity he sought. The cavalier would take 1,500 men, cross the Rappahannock above Pope’s right, ride to the Union rear, and cut the main Union supply line along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. Stuart had built his reputation on such operations, and this one seemed to offer especial pro-mise. Such a raid, if successful, could force Pope to retreat from the river; it would also give Stuart an opportunity to avenge the loss of his trappings at Verdiersville. Lee approved Stuart’s proposal the morning of the 22d. At 10:00 a.m., adorned in a hat given him by a sutler from Georgia, Stuart led his column north. His first stop: Warrenton.

Since spring the people of Warrenton had suffered the presence of the ‘vile Yankees’ in their town. Just how obnoxious the Yankee presence had been could be measured by the delirium with which the residents greeted their Confederate liberators. ‘We were received most enthusiastically,’ wrote the young Dabney, ‘the ladies nearly going into hysterics with joy & telling us never to take a prisoner.’ The women’showered us with flowers and refreshments of all kinds,’ recorded von Borcke. A memorable afternoon it was for Stuart’s troopers.

At Warrenton, Stuart chose the next and climactic stop on his tour to the rear of Pope’s army: Catlett’s Station. There he would burn the railroad bridge over Cedar Run. This bridge was an important link in Pope’s supply line. Its destruction would disrupt the flow of supplies for days–perhaps long enough to force Pope to yield his position on the river.

As Stuart’s men rode out of Warrenton at about 5:00 p.m., bad luck descended on them in the form of torrential rains. ‘It seemed like a solid mass of water,’ wrote one man. Another remembered that the men were soon ‘as wet as water could make us.’ With sunset, the rains descended even harder, and thunder rolled across the landscape. Stuart called it ‘the darkest night I ever knew.’

About 8:00 p.m. the column approached Catlett’s Station. Stuart sent Captain William Blackford of his staff to have a look. ‘I rode all around the outskirts of their encampment,’ remembered Blackford, ‘and found a vast assemblage of wagons and a city of tents, laid out in regular order and occupied by the luxuriously equipped quartermasters and commissaries….’ More importantly, Blackford found ‘no appearance of any large organized body of troops.’ (His assessment was right. Of the perhaps 500 Yankees at Catlett’s Station, fewer than 200 were armed.) Neither did the Yankees have pickets around the camp’s perimeter.

Still better news came from a servant who had mindlessly wandered into Stuart’s lines. According to a witness, the man than told Stuart that ‘General Pope’s headquarters train was there with all of his official papers, the army treasure chest, and all the personal baggage of the General and his staff.’ (Pope himself was at his headquarters several miles away.) ‘Here was a chance for revenge for the loss of the hat and haversack at Verdiersville,’ Blackford concluded. The captured servant even offered to guide Stuart’s troops to the booty. Stuart accepted his tender, but put him under guard nonetheless, with the promise of ‘kind treatment if faithful, and instant extermination if traitorous.’

The Confederates quietly subdued the few pickets who guarded the camp. Then Stuart unveiled his plan. The 9th Virginia Cavalry under Colonel W.H.F. ‘Rooney’ Lee (Robert E. Lee’s son) would lead the assault into the main camp north of the railroad; another column would ravage the camp south of the tracks. To the men of the 4th Virginia Cavalry, under Colonel Williams C. Wickham, would go the most important task. They would burn the bridge over Cedar Run.

The Confederates took a few minutes to arrange themselves on the edge of the Union camp, their rustling obscured by falling rain and rolling thunder. Stuart rode the line, telling his men to give ‘their wildest ‘Rebel Yell.” Then he turned to his bugler: ‘Sound the charge, Fred.’

The bugler managed barely a note before the dreaded ‘yell’ and the beat of hooves obscured his call. In the Union camp a few Federals reacted to the yell with glee, or only slight annoyance. One Yankee exclaimed, ‘There must be reinforcements coming on the Railroad.’ Another yelled, ‘There must be good news!’ And yet another poked his head out of his tent and yelled, ‘Hold on you —- —-, you are shooting this way!’

The Confederates of course ignored such entreaties. They careered through the camp’scattering out pistol balls promiscuously right and left,’ recorded a jolly staff officer. ‘Supper tables were kicked over and tents broken down in the [Federals'] rush to get out, the tents catching them sometimes in their fall like fish in a net.’ Yankees scattered from their tents toward the woods, some barely dressed, and all thoroughly scared. Chiswell Dabney claimed, ‘Never have I seen any thing like it[;] men were perfectly frantic with fear.’ The scene made veteran Confederates ‘laugh until they could scarcely keep their saddles,’ remembered Blackford.

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