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Chapter 4: Marylanders enlist, and organize to defend Virginia and the Confederacy.
While these events were occurring at
Harper's Ferry, considerable numbers of Marylanders were rendezvousing at
Richmond.
The enrolled men commanded by
Colonel Trimble, called out by the board of police commissioners, were drilled in a more or less efficient way in
Baltimore, until the meeting of the legislature at
Frederick, when they were disbanded.
Johnson's company, at the same time, having left
Frederick and gone to the
Point of Rocks, furnished the nucleus around which gathered the men thus dismissed by the police authorities.
They formed the eight companies mustered into the service of the
Confederate States by
Lieutenant-Colonel George Deas.
But the volunteer companies, the
Baltimore City Guard, the Maryland Guard, the
Independent Grays, were as well instructed, as well officered as any American volunteers ever are, and some of them had historical reputations to maintain, for their companies had fought at
North Point.
They, therefore, regarded themselves as superior to the undrilled crowd that
Captain Johnson was ‘licking into shape at
Harper's Ferry,’ as they put it, and proceeded to
Richmond, where they at once put themselves in accord with the
Virginia authorities.
Marylanders were to be embodied into three regiments, armed and mustered into the service of
Virginia, who was to adopt them.
In carrying out this plan
Governor Letcher issued commissions to
Francis Q. Thomas,
ex-captain United States army, as colonel of the First; to
Bradley T. Johnson as lieutenant-colonel of the Second, and to
Alden 
