A volunteer expedition.
Asking pardon for this brief digression, we return to the picket by the river, where
Lieutenant Berkeley and
White were holding a council.
It was agreed that White should go forward alone to reconnoitre, while
Berkeley held his men ready for any emergency.
Moving cautiously along the bank—it being so dark that he could not be recognized—White approached the landing where the
Federals (estimated at over 1,000) were waiting for deliverance.
Returning with this report, it was proposed to try and capture them, but a gallant fellow, afterwards killed at
Gettysburg, said the scheme was too utterly rash for consideration, and it was decided that White should ride to
Hunton's headquarters, explain the situation, and ask for the regiment.
Colonel Hunton—who had been prostrated for several weeks by a painful malady, but thinking a battle was imminent, and unwilling that his men should go into it without him, had left his sick bed against the protest of his physician and the entreaties of his family—was so completely worn out at the close of the battle as to make it necessary for him to retire to
Leesburg for medical attention, leaving
Lieutenant-Colonel Tebbs in command.
Tebbs would not assume the responsibility of ordering the regiment on the expedition, but said that any who chose to volunteer for it might do so.
[
269]
Thereupon
Captains Edmund and
Wm. N. Berkeley;
Lieutenants R. H. Tyler,
L. B. Stephenson and
Robert Cue;
Sergeants.
F. Wilson,
I. O. Adams and——Gochenaner;
Corporals B. Hunt,
W. Fletcher,
R. Hutchinson,
Wm. Thomas;
Privates A. S. Adams,
J. W. Adams,
F. A. Boyer,
I. L. Chinn,
G. Crell, R
S. Downs,
W. Donnelly,
G. Insor,
C. R. Griffin,
John George, I).
L. Hixon,
T. W. Hutchinson,
I. F. Ish,
R. I. Smith,
W. C. Thomas,
J. W. Tavenner,
I. M. McVeigh,
L. W. Luckett,
M. H. Luckett, A. M. O'Bannon,
Rev. Charles F. Linthicum,
R. O. Carter,
Geo. Roach,
E. Nails,
Howard Trussell,
D. Rouke,
T. E. Tavenner,
P. Gochenaner,
F. Tinsman,
T. H. Benton,
T. Kidwell,
C. Fox,
V. R. Costello, Will
Moore,
J. Ellis,
Wm. McCarty,
J. M. McClannehan,
E. Herrington,
R. Julian and
C. D. Lucket—in all, fifty-two—came forward promptly, saying to
White: ‘We will follow you.’
