Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/147

Rh won will be guarded by Virginia with all the pride she feels in her own true sons, and the ties which have linked us together, memory will preserve.

You who struck the first blow in Baltimore and the last in Virginia have done all that could be asked of you. Had the rest of our officers and men adhered to our cause with the same devotion, to-day we should have been free from Yankee thralldom. I have ordered the brigade to return to their homes, and it behooves us now to separate.

With my warmest wishes for your welfare, and a. hearty God bless you, I bid you farewell.

Brigadier-General Commanding Division." And so closes the record of the Maryland Line in the army of the Confederate States. It is inscribed on the pages of the history of the army of Northern Virginia. It fired the first gun in the Seven Days' battles. It fired the first gun in Early 's advance into Maryland in 1864, when he crossed 'the Potomac at Shepherdstown, and the last, when he recrossed at Poolesville. It struck the first blow and shed the first blood of the revolution in Baltimore on the 19th of April, 1861, and made the last charge at Appomattox, April 9, 1865. Future generations of Marylanders will be proud of its achievements, and in the South I hope its memory will be honored and loved.