I/, mortal of Gen. .1'ilxtl A. Earl;/. 287
and in many less affairs, such as Auburn, Summerville Ford, Fair- field and Port Republic. Some of these names stand for several days of battle. I doubt if there was an officer or soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia who, in the open field, was oftener under fire. He was the right-hand man of Jackson, in his corps, and the right-hand man of Lee, after Jackson had fallen, and he enjoyed the abiding confidence of both. He was successively a colonel, a briga- dier-general, a major-general and a lieutenant-general, each promo- tion coming to him unsolicited and unsought, and he commanded with equal ability a regiment, a brigade, a division, a corps, and an army.
It was his brigade which, after a swift march from right to left, at the first battle of Manassas, broke the last front of resistance offered by the enemy; and General Joseph E. Johnston says of Colonel Early, in his narrative of the war : " He reached the position intended just when the Federal army was apparently about to assume the offensive, and assailed its exposed front. The attack was conducted with too much skill and courage to be for a moment doubtful. The Federal right was at once thrown into confusion. A general advance of the Confedrate line, directed by General Beaure- gard, completed our success, and won the battle." This gave Early promotion to the rank of brigadier-general.
WILLIAMSBURG AND SHARPSBURG.
At Williamsburg on the 5th of May, 1862, he led the Twenty- fourth Virginia and Fifth North Carolina Regiments of his brigade in an assault upon a six-gun battery and redoubt, defended by the brigade of General Hancock, and was badly wounded in the charge. The movement was so bravely made that it won from the chivalrous Hancock the compliment which President Davis quotes in his his- tory of the Confederacy: "That the Twenty-fourth Virginia and Fifth North Carolina Regiments should have the word immortal inscribed upon their banners."
He reported for duty at Malvern Hill before he was well of his wound, and made his mark at Cedar Run, Groveton, and Manassas on Jackson's northern march to Sharpsburg.
Critical conjuncture was that of the Confederate army there on September 17, 1862 the bloodiest day in American history. With a river at his back and his entire command in the front, without reserves, Lee, with less than 40,000 men, resisted McClellan all day
