On July 21, 1861, as Union troops fell back from the fields of Manassas, panic broke loose at Cub Run Bridge. A single wagon overturned, blocking the narrow crossing—and at that moment, Capt. Delaware Kemper’s Alexandria Light Artillery opened fire. His shells crashed into the chokepoint, triggering chaos remembered in the press as “The Great Skedaddle.” What began as an orderly retreat turned into a stampede, the first great disaster of the Civil War.
Kemper, a native Alexandrian, would rise to Colonel of Confederate artillery before war’s end. After Appomattox, he devoted himself to education, diplomacy, and civic life, serving as professor, U.S. Consul to China, newspaperman, and captain of the Friendship Fire Company. Today, his fractured stone in St. Paul’s Cemetery marks the grave of the man whose guns once shook the Union Army into its first rout.