Union Troops Near the Brogue?
The item below is puzzling. Maybe some of my friends who are more knowledgeable about Civil War troop movements in York County during the Confederate invasion can shed some light.
The piece appeared in the Tuesday, July 7, 1863 York Gazette, but it was credited to the York Pennsylvanian newspaper. Area newspapers at that time were published weekly, so the “last Sunday” it refers to probably means June 28, not July 5. Plenty of Confederate troops arrived in York County on June 28 to occupy York and threaten the bridge across the Susquehanna at Wrightsville. Far fewer Union soldiers were available, and they were assigned to protect the bridge.
So how could “a few hundred Union troops” be anywhere near the Brogue? It says road to Brogue and sounds close enough to be in Chanceford Township. I don’t know of any soldiers that would have been traveling in that area. The First Troop Philadelphia City Calvary had been in Gettysburg and then York before they moved on to Wrightsville. Is it wholly fiction? Any ideas?
The article reads:
Fighting in the County
A terrible excitement was caused in the lower end of this county, around the Brogue, last Sunday evening. A few hundred Union troops marched down the Brogue road, and the citizens of that section having had pickets extended for a few miles, the latter mistook the former for rebels, firing upon them, and then running away in consternation and alarming the whole country for miles around. The fright is said to have been almost beyond description. Many persons cut the harness from horses which had been hitched to wagons and teams, and fled with the animals–whole families ran and sought hiding places in the hills and other places–and man and beast, promiscuously, were running around in wild confusion. A few hours elapsed before the mistake became known, and it was difficult to collect families and animals together. Pennsylvanian.
Click here for a later post to see who probably caused the Brogue scare.
Click here to read about the 1861 Panic in Hanover caused by one soldier.
