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In November, 1861,
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, then in command of the Confederate army of the
Potomac, withdrew from the posts of
Mason's and Munson's Hills, established by
Beauregard, having information that
McClellan was about to sweep them in.
Beauregard had established a capital secret service, and his spies in
Washington, in the departments and in
McClellan's headquarters, kept his headquarters perfectly advised of the intentions of
General McClellan.
They had reported in time
McDowell's projected movement on
Bull Run, which resulted in the
first battle of Manassas.
In November
Johnston withdrew from the line of Fairfax Court House to
Centreville, in front of
Bull Run, and in a month fell back to
Bull Run, where he put his troops in camp for the winter.
He made his men cover themselves in log huts, which were comfortable, but too warm and illventi-lated for troops in the field.
During all this period the Marylanders furnished a singular exception to the rest of the army.
The soldiers in the
Southern regiments were suffering from mumps, measles and whooping cough, which became epidemic with them; the Thirteenth North Carolina, for instance, which came up after the
battle of Manassas thirteen hundred rank and file for duty, became so reduced by these diseases that it could not parade enough men for camp guard, and was sent to the mountains to recruit its sick.
But the First Maryland had none of these diseases.
It lost a few men, not ten in all, by typhoid fever, but it was exempt from the numerous complaints that afflicted
