regiments, and its organization was never changed. It may have had near six thousand men on paper, but the above is the effective strength with which it came to Virginia. By inquiring of him you will find that I am correct. From the Battle of Sharpsburg it was in the division commanded by me, and it never after that time reached 3,000 men. Drayton's brigade did not come to Virginia until after the battles around Richmond. It was composed of the Fifteenth South Carolina and the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Georgia regiments and Third South Carolina battalion. A part, if not all of it, was engaged in the fight at Secessionville, South Carolina, on the 16th of June, 1862. Its first engagement in Virginia was on the Rappahannock, the 25th of August, 1862. After Sharpsburg it was so small that it was distributed among some other brigades in Longstreet's corps. In a roster of Longstreet's corps, published in the Banner of the South, by General Alexander, the history of the regiments composing Drayton's brigade is given. Coming to Virginia after the Seven Days Battles it, of course, had no effect in increasing General Lee's numbers at these battles. There is some strange mistake on your part, or that of General Drayton, about the brigade. If it had 7,000 men in it when it came here, then the three regiments and the battalion composing it must have averaged 1,750 men each. It lost only 93 men at Second Manassas, and 541 at South Mountain and Sharpsburg—in all, 634. Yet it was in a division of six brigades, commanded by D. R. Jones at Sharpsburg, and in his report (page 219, 2d volume, Reports,) he says that in his six brigades there were only 2,430 men on the morning of the 17th of September, 1862. Evans' brigade arrived from South Carolina in July, 1862, and its strength was 2,200. This must have been the brigade which you could not name, as no others than those mentioned came from the South during that summer. There was a new brigade formed after the battles out of some Louisiana regiments, which before were in other brigades. General Lee had forty brigades of infantry at Sharpsburg, Daniel's having returned to North Carolina, Wise's being left near Richmond, and Drayton's, Evans' and the new Louisiana brigade making up the forty. From the foregoing statement it will appear, then, that the troops received by General Lee from the South after Seven Pines, and before the Seven Days Battles, consisted of those brought by Holmes (9,296), Ripley's brigade (2,366), and Lawton's (3,500) in all 15,162, instead of the 37,000 you make out by your estimate. I must add that five companies of the First North Carolina cavalry, which had previously been with the army, returned from North Carolina after the commencement of the battles.
It remains now to inquire into the strength of the divisions of Jackson and Ewell, which came from the Valley, and which you put at 16,000. There were three brigades in each division—in Jackson's, the Stonewall (Winder's), Taliaferro's, and J. R. Jones's; and in Ewell's, Elzey's, Trimble's, and Taylor's (Louisiana). These brigades had gone through a very active and harassing campaign
