In June 1863, a small cavalry unit from Delaware faced off against Confederate legend J.E.B. Stuart in a desperate charge at Westminster, Maryland. What happened next should have made them heroes. Instead, their story was systematically buried by the very man who was supposed to lead them.
Major Napoleon Bonaparte Knight was a political appointee with no military experience—a Confederate deserter who took a Union commission when the winds shifted. When his cowardice at Westminster threatened to become a scandal, courts-martial were quashed. Witnesses were silenced. Official reports were rewritten.
BUT THREE SERGEANTS KEPT DIARIES.
For 160 years, these firsthand accounts have sat in separate archives, telling pieces of a story that Civil War historians have never assembled. By weaving together the daily entries of Harrison Vandegrift, Spencer Hitch, and Townsend Downes with official records and personal correspondence, Delaware’s Forgotten Cavalry reveals how ordinary soldiers responded when their leadership failed catastrophically, and how they quietly chose honor over hierarchy.
The cover-up had powerful allies in Washington. The truth had three sergeants with diaries. Their voices, preserved in fading ink and scattered collections, endure to this day.
Some stories survive because they’re too important to stay buried.