Reunion of Virginia Division, A. N. V. Association. 195
been ordered to report to him at Culpeper; * and on the loth, he writes to Colonel Cocke that the regiments under Colonels Garland and Preston were designed for Manassas Junction. f On the 14th, Colonel Cocke reports:!
"The force that I have been able to assemble thus far at Manassas Junc- tion, consists of a detachment of artillery under Captain D. Kemper, with two six-pounders; Captain VV. H. Payne's company, numbering 76 men; Captain J. S. Green's company, numbering 57 men ; Captain Hamilton's company, numbering about 60, and two Irish companies, numbering respec- tively, 54 and 58, and Colonel Garland's force arrived Sunday, consisting of 490 men. Altogether about 830 men. Also Captain Morris's company, 88, Warrenton Riflemen. Total 918. The Powhatan troop under Captain Lay has been ordered back here and will arrive to-day."
These Virginia troops with the South Carolina brigade, which Joined them a week after, constituted the nucleus of the Army of Northern Virginia.
There was considerable confusion at this time as to the rank of officers. The Convention of Virginia, just before the termination of its session, reduced the number of the higher grades in the service of Virginia, by which action General Gwyn, General Johnston, General Ruggles and General Cocke, were reduced one degree. This neces- sitated a change in some of the commands, and on the 21st May, General Bonham, who had been appointed a Brigadier- General in the Confederate army, was assigned to the command of the troops on the Alexandria line, and was directed to post his brigade of South Carolina volunteers at the Manassas Junction, and to establish his headquarters at that point, or in advance as he might find necessary. Colonel G. H. Terrett, who had been in command at Alexandria, re- tained it, and so did Colonel Philip St. George Cocke of those of Culpeper, where, from a report made by him on the 8th May, he had ' twelve hundred men. Both commands were embraced in General Bonham's district. §
Thus it was that South Carolina troops were among the very first stationed at Manassas, a field soon to be rendered famous in the annals of the Army of Northern Virginia, and which they were to hallow, in both the great battles fought upon it, with the blood of so many of the noblest sons of their State. A field on which South Carolina furnished the sacrifice of the first general officer killed in
- Records War of Rebellion, Vol. 11, p. 821.
jibid, p. 824. % Ibid, p. 841. I Ibid, page 879.
