Stuart's cavalry screened Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate infantry as it marched north in the Shenandoah Valley behind the sheltering Blue Ridge Mountains.

Gen. David McMurtrie Gregg's division, encountered Col. Thomas T. Munford's troopers near the village of Aldie, resulting in four hours of stubborn fighting.

Early that very same morning, Colonel Munford led the 2nd and 3rd Virginia Cavalry eastward across the Loudoun Valley from Upperville through Middleburg to Aldie on the Bull Run Mountains on a reconnaissance and forage mission.

He established a line of pickets in Aldie to watch for enemy activity and withdrew his two regiments northwest of town on the Snicker's Gap Turnpike to camp on the farm of Franklin Carter.

Around the same time, the rest of Munford's brigade (the 1st, 4th, and 5th Virginia Cavalry, under the command of Col. Williams Carter Wickham) arrived at Dover Mills, a small hamlet on the Little River west of Aldie.

Reuben F. Boston) east of the William Adam farmhouse, Rosser deployed west along a ridge that covered the two roads leading out of Aldie and awaited the arrival of the Federals, as well as Munford and Wickham.

Rosser's line held and he mounted a countercharge in concert with a sharp volley from the sharpshooters he had placed on his left and easily drove the Federals back, securing his hold on the Ashby's Gap Turnpike.

A furious fight erupted, which at first went in favor of Munford as Federal charges were met, stopped, and then forced back by the withering volley of sharpshooters entrenched along a stone wall.

The tide finally turned as Union reinforcements charged into the fray in the fading light and the 6th Ohio overran Boston's detachment on the Ashby's Gap Turnpike, capturing or killing most of his men.

Aldie was the first in a series of small battles along the Ashby's Gap Turnpike in which Stuart's forces successfully delayed Pleasonton's thrust across the Loudoun Valley, depriving him of the opportunity to locate Lee's army.