Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

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[297] exemplifying the extent to which the individuality, self-reliance, and habitual use of small arms by the people of the South was a substitute for military training, and, on the other hand, how the want of such training made the Northern new levies inferior to the like kind of Southern troops.

A detached work on the right of General Magruder's line was occupied June 11, 1861, by the First Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers and three hundred sixty Virginians under the command of an educated, vigilant, and gallant soldier, then Colonel D. H. Hill, First Regiment North Carolina Volunteers, subsequently a lieutenant general in the Confederate service. He reports that this small force was “engaged for five and a half hours with four and a half regiments of the enemy at Bethel Church, nine miles from Hampton. The enemy made three distinct and well-sustained charges, but were repulsed with heavy loss. Our cavalry pursued them for six miles, when their retreat became a total rout.”

On the other side Frederick Townsend, colonel of the Third Regiment of the enemy's forces, after stating with much minuteness the orders and line of march, describes how, “about five or six miles from Hampton, a heavy and well-sustained fire of canister and small-arms was opened upon the regiment,” and how it was afterward discovered to be a portion of their own column which had fired upon them. After due care for the wounded and a recognition of their friends, the column proceeded, and the colonel describes his regiment as moving to the attack “in line of battle, as if on parade, in the face of a severe fire of artillery and small-arms.” Subsequently, the description proceeds, “a company of my regiment had been separated from the regiment by a thickly-hedged ditch,” and marched in the adjoining field in line with the main body. Not being aware of the separation of that company, the colonel states that, therefore, “upon seeing among the breaks in the hedge the glistening of bayonets in the adjoining field, I immediately concluded that the enemy were outflanking, and conceived it to be my duty to immediately retire and repel that advance.”¹

Without knowing anything of the subsequent career of the colonel from whose report these extracts have been made, or of the officers who opened fire upon him while he was marching to the execution of the orders under which they were all acting, it is fair to suppose, after a few months' experience, such scenes as are described could not have