Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/200

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Southern Historical Society Papers.

discarded old pair of shoes. He stopped and looked at them an then at his own shoes. He took them up, turned them over, and then looked again at the old shoes he had on. It was evidently with him a close question at to which pair had the advantage. He finally shook off his old shoes and put on the pair which a preceding comrade had discarded as worthless. The wearer of these old shoes was a patriotic and gallant soldier.

When our brigade arrived at Culpeper Courthouse, it was in Gen. Anderson's division. It was here on November 7, 1862, that Armistead's brigade was placed in the new formed division of Gen. Pickett and all the Virginia regiments in Anderson's division were taken from it and Southern regiments substituted in their place. It was here that John S. Jenkins, of this city, on the 1 7th of November, 1862, entered on his duties as adjutant of the Fourteenth Virginia, appointed in the place of Adjutant G. W. Finley, who resigned to go home to attend to the affairs of his father, who had recently died. He subsequently joined Garnett's brigade and was at Gettysburg and there captured. He afterwards became a distinguished Presbyterian minister and held the title of D. D. On the 21st of November, 1862, Armistead's brigade left Culpeper Courthouse, and reached camp near Fredericksburg on the 23rd. The brigade was in line of battle on the 13th of December, 1862, when Burnside crossed the Rappahannock and attacked our forces, but it was not actively engaged. It wintered at Guinea Station on the Richmond and Fredericksburg road. In the spring it was ordered to Suffolk, from there it was ordered to join Lee's army, then ready to commence its march into Pennsylvania.

Col. Hodges, writing on the 9th of June, 1863, from Spotsylvania county, says: "We left Hanover Junction yesterday morning and have proceeded forty miles on our way to join Gen. Lee, either in Culpeper county or beyond if he has crossed the upper Rappahannock. We have now been marching every day for a week, averaging a full day's march of seventeen or eighteen miles every day. My men are in excellent condition, and I know will perform their whole duty should they be required to meet the enemy. So you may expect to hear a grand account of the regiment and I am proud to say that it has always done well, and in some instances far excelled those they were thrown with."