Another view was offered by E.H. McDonald, a captain in the 12th Virginia Cavalry, the unit generally given credit for Wyndham’s capture. In a letter to the editor of the Winchester Evening Star, McDonald wrote, “When we crossed the road we saw the enemies cavalry formed on a hill 300 yards away, and as we approached them in our charge they began to break away from their line and ran, leaving only Wyndham and a few men to occupy the hill. Dismounting from his horse he came to meet us and when we reached him said: ‘I will not command such cowards!’ I asked Holmes Conrad of Winchester, then a private in my command, to take his sword and carry him to the rear, which he did, and he still has the sword, the finest Damascus blade.”

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Toward the end of the 19th century, the controversy over Wyndham’s capture accelerated. In response to an 1896 letter from Major Jed Hotchkiss, Conrad, who later became a major, claimed:

After proceeding about a hundred yards I discovered that the Federal officer [Wyndham] was continuing his advance at a rapid gait but entirely alone; his command remained where I had seen it from the top of the ridge. Then too I discovered for the first time that none of those who had been with me on the summit of the ridge had attended me in my charge. The sun was shining full on the advancing officer whose sabre, which he handled with a master’s hand, shown like a circle of light. We each approached the narrow ravine between our respective ridges….A sunken rail fence about 3 rails high in the bottom of the ravine was between us….When each of us was about 8 or 10 feet from this place….I dropped my sabre from my hand and let it hang from the sword knot on my wrist and drawing my pistol held it down by my side. The officer had reached the fence which he for the first time saw and halted. The fore legs of his horse were over it. His sabre was held with the point down. He was peering over the horses head down at the fence which had impeded him. I gathered rein tightly in my left hand, stuck both spurs into my horse and in a moment had the muzzle of my pistol against the side of the big red nose of the fiercest looking cavalryman I ever confronted. He had an enormous tawny moustache that reached nearly to his ears; large eyes of the deepest blue and these were fastened upon me with a clear, strong gaze without the lease indication of fear.

Unwilling to betray my own nervousness by a faltering voice I was content to return his stare for a minute in silence and then said to him ‘Drop your saber!’ I did not tell him to ‘return’ I was unwilling that the point of that formidable blade should be removed, even for a second from its earthward direction. He did not instantly obey. I said: ‘If you don’t drop it I’ll shoot.’ He dropped it. I told him then to unbuckle his sabre belt and hand it to me. He did so. I buckled it around me with scabbard and pistol that were on it. I ordered him to dismount which he did and to hand me his sabre which I returned to its scabbard. I then took him back up the hill, he holding to my stirrup leather….

Volume II of Confederate Military History, published in 1899, contained a brief account of the June 6 action, with only a single sentence devoted to the capture of Wyndham: “Sir Percy himself, in a remarkable personal encounter with Captain Conrad of Ashby’s staff, and 63 of his men being taken prisoner.”

Beginning in 1904, the Winchester Evening Star published a series of articles and letters that brought new life to the controversy over who captured Wyndham. On the occasion of a visit to Winchester by Wyndham’s son Percy in May 1904, an article appeared that unequivocally identified Conrad as the colonel’s captor and noted Wyndham’s sword was a prized possession on the wall of Conrad’s Winchester home.

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