(afterward lieutenant-general); Maj. W. H. C. Whiting, of the engineers (who fell at Fort Fisher a major-general); Maj. A. McLean, quartermaster, and Capt. T. L. Preston, assistant adjutant-general. Within an hour after his arrival, Col. T. J. Jackson called on General Johnston, learned the object of his coming, and saw his orders; but when Johnston, the next morning, sent him orders announcing the change of commanders to be made known to the troops, Jackson courteously replied that he did not "feel at liberty to transfer his command to another without further instructions from Governor Letcher or General Lee;" but offered to furnish Johnston at once every facility for obtaining information relative to the post. Jackson soon learned that the Virginia forces had been turned over to the Confederacy, when he promptly obeyed Johnston's orders.
On assuming command at Harper's Ferry, Johnston had under him the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Tenth, Thirteenth and Twenty-seventh Virginia regiments of infantry; the Second and Eleventh Mississippi; the Fourth Alabama; a Maryland and a Kentucky battalion; four companies of Virginia artillery, of four guns each, but without caissons, horses or harness; and the First regiment of Virginia cavalry, about 250 men, including Capt. Turner Ashby's company, temporarily attached to it by Colonel Jackson; about 5,200 effective men in all. Among the officers present were T. J. Jackson and A. P. Hill, who became lieutenant-generals; Stuart, "matchless as a commander of outposts," as Johnston wrote, and Capt. W. N. Pendleton, who became brigadier-general and Lee's chief of artillery. As Johnston wrote, the troops were undisciplined, of course, also "badly armed and equipped—several regiments being without accouterments; were almost destitute of ammunition, and, like all new troops assembled in large bodies, they were suffering very much from sickness; nearly 40 per cent, of the total being in the hospitals, there or elsewhere, from the effects of measles and mumps."
Johnston had been distinctly informed, in his conversations with Lee and Davis, that they regarded Harper's Ferry as a natural fortress commanding the entrance to the valley of Virginia from Pennsylvania and Maryland, and that his command was not of a military district, or of an active army, but of a fortress and its garrison. A
