There were certainly exceptions to the general absence of cordiality.  The troops fared well during their sojourn in Frederick.  Supplies were plentiful; food and clothing were gratuitously distributed, and Jackson was presented with a fine but unbroken charger.  The gift was timely, for “Little Sorrel,” the companion of so many marches, was lost for some days after the passage of the Potomac; but the Confederacy was near paying a heavy price for the “good grey mare.”  When Jackson first mounted her a band struck up close by, and as she reared the girth broke, throwing her rider to the ground.  Fortunately, though stunned and severely bruised, the general was only temporarily disabled, and, if he appeared but little in public during his stay in Frederick, his inaccessibility was not due to broken bones.  “Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson, and for a time Jeb Stuart,” writes a staff officer, “had their headquarters near one another in Best’s Grove.  Hither in crowds came the good people of Frederick, especially the ladies, as to a fair.  General Jackson, still suffering from his hurt, kept to his tent, busying himself with maps and official papers, and declined to see visitors.  Once, however, when he had been called to General Lee’s tent, two young girls waylaid him, paralysed him with smiles and questions, and then jumped into their carriage and drove off rapidly, leaving him there, cap in hand, bowing, blushing, speechless.  But once safe in his tent, he was seen no more that day."* (* “Stonewall Jackson in Maryland.”  Colonel H.K.  Douglas.  Battles and Leaders volume 2 page 621.) The next evening (Sunday) he went with his staff to service in the town, and slept soundly, as he admitted to his wife, through the sermon of a minister of the German Reformed Church.* (* “The minister,” says Colonel Douglas, “was credited with much loyalty and courage, because he had prayed for the President of the United States in the very presence of Stonewall Jackson.  Well, the general didn’t hear the prayer, and if he had he would doubtless have felt like replying as General Ewell did, when asked at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, if he would permit the usual prayer for President Lincoln—­’Certainly; I’m sure he needs it’”)

But it was not for long that the Confederates were permitted to repose in Frederick.  The enemy had made no further reply to the passage of the Potomac beyond concentrating to the west of Washington.  McClellan, who had superseded Pope, was powerless, owing to the inefficiency of his cavalry, to penetrate the cordon of Stuart’s pickets, and to ascertain, even approximately, the dispositions of the invading force.  He was still in doubt if the whole or only part of Lee’s army had crossed into Maryland; and whether his adversary intended to attack Washington by the left bank of the Potomac, to move on Baltimore, or to invade Pennsylvania, were questions which he had no means of determining.  This uncertainty compelled him to move cautiously, and on September 9 his advanced guard was still twenty miles east of Frederick.