Confederate Military History. Robert White
North Carolina and Tennessee line. Virginia troops were poured into the place. Captain Johnson, as we have seen, procured from Colonel Jackson permission to rendezvous the Marylanders there and at the Point of Rocks, and by June 1st had collected about five hundred men. As soon as Virginia had joined the Confederacy, President Davis, equally impressed with the value and importance of this Thermopylae, assigned to command it Gen. Joseph Eggleston Johnston, the second in rank of the generals of the Confederate army. Johnston ranked next to Lee, but was his equal in experience in war. He was a Virginian by birth and blood, and knew all about the Virginia fetish about Harper's Ferry While the President was pouring troops from Arkansas, from Mississippi, from Alabama, from South Carolina, into Harper's Ferry, Johnston knew that it was a trap, a deadfall, for the soldier who attempted to hold it. It was commanded on the east by the Maryland heights beyond the Potomac, and on the south by heights on the other side of the Shenandoah.
The Confederate States government was then offering every inducement for Maryland to join it. It exempted Maryland from its declaration of war against the United States, and it was tender of her territory and her feelings. When, therefore, Johnston saw the absolute necessity of holding Maryland heights, he saved the invasion of Maryland by sending Marylanders to occupy the position. He ordered Captain Johnson with his eight companies, and Col. Blanton Duncan with his First Kentucky regiment, to take the Maryland heights, fortify and hold them. They did so while Johnston strained every nerve to strip Harper's Ferry of everything that could be made of use to the Confederacy. By June 15th he had cleared out the place, brought the Marylanders and the Kentuckians from the mountains and evacuated Harper's Ferry. A large Federal army had been collected at Chambersburg, Pa., thirty miles to the north of Johnston, under command of Major-General Patterson. For several days Patterson had given signs of restlessness unmistakable to an old soldier of Johnston's caliber, and the very day Johnston moved out of Harper's Ferry, Patterson marched south from Chambersburg. The former moved to Charlestown, Va., the latter to Hagerstown, Md. On June 17th, Patterson crossed the Potomac at Williamsport and Johnston went into line of battle at Bunker Hill, a place halfway between Martinsburg and Winchester. The Confederates were delighted at the prospects of another battle of Bunker Hill on the 17th of June. But a large portion of Patterson's army were sixty-day men, and when their time expired they marched home, General Patterson and the remnant of his troops following in such temper as they might to the Maryland side. Patterson having recrossed the Potomac, Johnston fell back to Winchester, where he proceeded to organize his incongruous troops into brigades and divisions. One brigade, the Fourth, was formed of the First Maryland, the Tenth and the Thirteenth Virginia and the Third Tennessee, and Col. Arnold Elzey of the First Maryland was assigned to command it. The Fourth and Third brigades constituted a division under the command of Brig.-Gen. E. Kirby Smith. The field officers of the First Maryland were commissioned to date from June 17, 1861. The first duty the regiment was set to perform under its new field officers was on the day after the arrival at Winchester. On June 19th, Lieutenant-Colonel Steuart was directed to return to Harper's Ferry by railroad train and complete the destruction of the shops and Federal property left on the evacuation of the 15th. This duty Colonel Steuart executed with great intelligence. Instead of burning up a great magazine of seasoned and shaped gunstocks, which he found abandoned, he loaded the whole outfit on a train of cars and hauled them back with his command to Winchester. The service was so valuable and so exceedingly sensible that the commanding general rewarded it with a special order of approbation. Steuart and the Marylanders enjoyed the unique distinction of being probably the only command that was ever decorated by a special order for disobedience of orders. General Johnston had sent them on this detail with distinct and positive orders to burn everything burnable. They brought off a trainload of most valuable plunder, and the commanding general honored them thus:
Special order.
Headquarters, Winchester, June 22, 1861.
The commanding general thanks Lieutenant-Colonel Steuart and the Maryland regiment for the faithful and exact manner in which they carried out his orders of the 19th instant at Harper's Ferry.
He is glad to learn that owing to their discipline, no private property was injured, and no unoffending citizen disturbed. The soldierly qualities of the Maryland regiment will not be forgotten in the day of action.
By order of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston.
The Confederate strategy in the early part of 1861 was to hold armies, or army corps, within supporting distance of each other along the exposed frontier of Virginia. If one army was attacked the corps to the right and left of it was to move promptly to its assistance. Patterson, after retiring beyond the Potomac, was heavily reinforced and recrossed the river, threatening Johnston at Winchester. Johnston, on the other hand, covered his front so thoroughly with cavalry patrols and pickets as to interpose an impenetrable veil between Patterson and himself.
On July 18, 1861, General McDowell moved out of Alexandria on Beauregard at Fairfax Court House. Beauregard retired behind Bull Run. McDowell on the 19th made a heavy reconnaissance in force and found Beauregard's position. The latter called on Johnston for help. He left Winchester in the morning of the 18th and marched to Piedmont, on the Manassas Gap railroad, whence his troops were hurried by rail to Manassas Junction. In the meantime McDowell had thrown his right around Beauregard's left, turned his position, and at daylight of the 21st attacked him, driving everything before him as he marched down the right bank of Bull Run. By midday the Confederates were in retreat, their line broken and their position forced. About noon, the Fourth brigade, Colonel Elzey, arrived at the junction of the Manassas Gap and Orange & Alexandria railroads. The command was at once disembarked. McDowell's heavy guns were pounding away toward the east, the first hostile fire the men had ever heard. They were formed: First Maryland on the right, Third Tennessee, Tenth Virginia, Thirteenth Virginia. By the time they were ready to move, Kirby Smith rode up in a strain of tense excitement. He assumed charge of the brigade. The other part of his division was not up—‘The watchword is Sumter, the signal is this,’ throwing his right hand to his forehead, palm outwards. ‘Go where the fire is hottest; forward march!’
The excitement of the first fight, the growing fire, the spreading volleys, braced up the men. At the order ‘double-quick’ they struck out in a trot, down by the junction, past the cluster of huts and houses, thence straight as the crow flies toward ‘where the fire was hottest.’ After a run of a few miles the column was halted to breathe and load. Then on again. Wounded men coming back cried, ‘Go back. We are all cut to pieces. Go back. You'll all get killed!’ But the Fourth brigade kept steadily on. As it passed a clump of pines on the right, a sharp volley from a squad of the Brooklyn Zouaves knocked General Smith over the neck of his horse and Elzey resumed command. By that time the day had advanced to three or four o'clock. The field was dotted with retreating men, hurrying ambulances, flying wagons. Just to the right was a squad of cavalry. A shell burst over them and the cavalry scattered. Running over two lines lying in ranks on the ground, still Elzey pressed on to the left. Entering a wood, beyond which was heavy musketry firing, he formed line of battle. Smith at Manassas had detached A. P. Hill with the Thirteenth Virginia to hold one of the fords of Bull Run. With three regiments remaining Elzey pressed straight to the front. Getting nearly through the wood, he halted inside the edge of it. In front were a branch and a worm fence; beyond it an open field gently rising for four hundred yards into a considerable elevation. On the ridge stood a line of battle. Uniforms were no designation, as the line showed no colors. Cried Elzey to his aide-de-camp, Charles Couter, of Prince George's, Maryland: ‘Couter, give me a glass—give me a glass, quick.’ Just at that instant the breeze blew out the flag on the hill. It was the stars and stripes. ‘Fire!’ cried Elzey, and the whole line delivered its volley. ‘Charge!’ he shouted. The Marylanders had six companies of Mississippi rifles and three companies of bayonets. But over the fence the whole line went with a yell—up the hill—through the Yankee line, or rather where it had been. It had gone, dissolved into mist. Elzey pressed right on. He was behind McDowell's right and he never stopped to draw breath. The whole Union line crumpled up, and First Manassas was won. As the Maryland colonel rode proudly down on the right of his line, Beauregard dashed up, filled with enthusiasm— ‘Hail! Elzey, Blucher of the day!’ and in a moment President Davis came up with General Johnston. ‘General Elzey, I congratulate you,’ said the man who made generals. Elzey