Confederate Military History. Robert White
Federal relations agreed on their report May 7th that it was inexpedient to take any steps toward the organization and arming of the militia, though it was not made until the 10th. But on the 8th Johnson and his company marched to Virginia. At the Point of Rocks he arranged with Capt. James Ashby to ride into Frederick, seize the governor and carry him off to Virginia and thus break up the State government and throw it into the hands of the legislature, who would be obliged to take charge during the interregnum. A notice to this effect was sent to the leaders in the legislature and they promptly dispatched T. Parkin Scott, member from Baltimore City, to Johnson, then on the Maryland Heights with the Maryland battalion, demanding that he cease his enterprises and let them alone. He obeyed them and they went to prison; while he went into the field.
The battalion at Harper's Ferry was helpless. Company A was the only company that pretended to be armed, and it carried Hall's carbines, which had been procured in Baltimore by its captain. This arm was the original breechloader manufactured at Harper's Ferry for the United States army, and was so inefficient that it was promptly condemned and discarded. Hence it was sold cheap to innocent militiamen. But the others didn't have even these worthless carbines. They had rushed off from home, fired by the enthusiasm of those days in Baltimore, had stolen rides on the cars or had walked to Point of Rocks and to Harper's Ferry where they were fed. Provisions were plenty, but they had no clothes, blankets, tents, cooking utensils—nothing that soldiers need and must have to be of any service. They had no government to appeal to for arms. In fact, they were outlaws from their own State government. They were too proud to go back home; stay and fight they would and must. All around them were warmhearted comrades who shared their blankets with them at night and their rations by day. Unless something could be done to keep them together, unless they could be armed, equipped and legally organized, they must inevitably dissolve, be absorbed in surrounding commands, and thus Maryland lose her main hope and best chance to be represented by her own sons, bearing her flag in the army of the Confederate States.
At this crisis Mrs. Bradley T. Johnson came forward and offered to go to North Carolina and apply there for arms and equipment. She was the daughter of the Hon. Romulus M. Saunders, for a generation a leading and distinguished member of Congress from North Carolina, and by appointment of Polk, minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary to Spain, with a special mandate to purchase Cuba and pay one hundred millions for it. His young daughters were with him and were introduced to court and presented to the queen. There they became intimate with Eugenie de Montijo, countess de Teba, who afterward became empress of the French. Mrs. Johnson was then in the prime of her youth, handsome, graceful, accomplished. She had. left her comfortable home in Frederick with her little boy, a lad five years old, to follow her husband. She now volunteered to serve him. She was the only hope of Maryland. Captain Johnson applied to Colonel Jackson for advice in this emergency. Jackson ordered that Mrs. Johnson be furnished with escort and transportation and that she start at once. On May 24, 1861, she left the camp of Companies A and B at the Point of Rocks, escorted by Capt. Wilson Carey Nicholas, Company G, and Second-Lieut. G. M. E. Shearen, Company A, to go to Raleigh via Richmond. At Leesburg they found that Alexandria had that day been occupied by the Federals and thus communication southward cut. Returning, she and her staff went up to Harper's Ferry and thence by Winchester and Strasburg and Manassas Junction to Richmond and Raleigh, where she arrived on the night of the 27th. The next morning, accompanied by her father and her escort, she applied to Gov. Thomas H. Ellis and the council of state for arms for her husband and his men. There were on that council some plain countrymen, in their home spun, but they bore hearts of gold. It was a picturesque incident. Here this elegant, graceful, refined young lady, whose family was known to every man of them, and to some of whom she was personally known—there the circle of grave, plain old men taking in every word she uttered, watching every movement. Her father, Judge Saunders, one of the most illustrious citizens of the State, as simple, direct, frank a gentleman as ever lived, had put his daughter forward to tell her plain story in the fewest and simplest words possible. She said: ‘Governor and gentlemen, I left my husband and his comrades in Virginia. They have left their homes in Maryland to fight for the South, but they have no arms, and I have come to my native State to beg my own people to help us. Give arms to my husband and his comrades, so that he can help you!’
‘Madam,’ said one of the council, old, venerable and gray-haired, slapping his thigh with a resounding blow, —‘Madam, you shall have everything that this State can give.’ And the order was made then and there, on the spot, at the instant, that she should be supplied with five hundred Mississippi rifles and ten thousand cartridges, with necessary equipments. This at the time when, in the language of the day, every cartridge was worth a dollar.
But her visit and her errand lighted the greatest enthusiasm among her fellow countrymen. The constitutional convention of North Carolina was then in session. It was the most illustrious body of Carolinians that ever assembled. The members of it called a meeting at night in the capitol, under the leadership of Hon. Weldon H. Edwards, president of the convention, Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin of the supreme court of the State, her father, Judge Saunders, and others. The meeting was held in the hall of the house of commons, was presided over by ex-Gov. Thomas S. Reid and was attended with great enthusiasm. The cause of the Marylanders was espoused with ardor, the meeting making a liberal contribution of money on the spot. Hon. Kenneth Raynor, ex-member of Congress, addressing the meeting, said:
‘If great events produce great men—so in the scene before us we have proof that great events produce great women. It was one that partook more of the romance than of the realities of life. One of our own daughters, raised in the lap of luxury, blessed with the enjoyment of all the elements of elegance and ease, had quit her peaceful home, followed her husband to the camp, and leaving him in that camp, has come to the home of her childhood to seek aid for him and his comrades, not because he is her husband, but because he is fighting the battles of his country, against a tyrant.’
He paid a high tribute to the patriotism and love of liberty which eminently characterized the people of Maryland. ‘They were fighting our battles,’ he said, ‘with halters round their necks.’
On the 29th Mrs. Johnson left Raleigh with her escort and her arms, and her route was a continued ovation. At every town, at every station, the people had gathered to see the woman who was arming her husband's regiment, and they overwhelmed her with enthusiasm and hearty sympathy. At Petersburg a substantial sum of money was handed to her, and stopping at Richmond she procured from John Letcher, governor of Virginia, a supply of camp-kettles, hatchets, axes, etc., and with the money in her hands, ordered forty-one wall tents made at once. On the 31st of May she left Richmond with her arms, ammunition and supplies. At Manassas Beauregard gave her an order to take any train she might find necessary for transportation and to hold all trains subject to her orders. She rode in the freight car on her boxes of rifles. Companies A and B had during her absence been moved up to Harper's Ferry to unite with the rest of the command, and on June 3, 1861. after an absence of ten days from camp, she returned and delivered to her husband the results of her energy, devotion and enthusiasm. The following receipt from the chief of ordnance of Stonewall Jackson's command has probably no parallel in the history of war:
Received, Ordnance Department, Harper's Ferry, Va., June 3, 1861, of Mrs. Bradley T. Johnson, Five Hundred Mississippi rifles (cal. 54) Ten Thousand cartridges and Thirty-five Hundred caps.
G. N. Cochrane, Master of Ordnance.
Such an incident of courage, of heroism, of devotion and of enthusiasm thrilled that army through every rank and fiber. Colonel Jackson, then in command at Harper's Ferry, afterwards the world-famous ‘Stonewall,’ called on her, with his staff, and thanked her. The officers of the battalion in meeting:
Resolved—That the thanks of the Maryland Line be tendered to Mrs. Captain Bradley T. Johnson for her earnest, patriotic and successful efforts in arming and equipping the Maryland Line.
Resolved—That we, the officers, pledge ourselves and for our men that the arms she has obtained shall at the close of the war be returned to the State of North Carolina, without stain or dishonor.
Resolved—That these resolutions be signed by the officers of the meeting and presented to Mrs. Johnson.
James R. Herbert, President. I. G. W.