Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/322

104 Echols' brigade included the Twenty-second regiment, Lieut.-Col. John C. McDonald; Twenty- third battalion, Maj. William Blessing; Twenty-sixth battalion, Lieut.-Col. George M. Edgar. Witcher's brigade was composed of the Thirty-fourth battalion, Maj. John A. McFarlane, and the battalion of Lieut.-Col. Thomas B. Swann. Capt. H. C. Dou that's battery was with the artillery.

The total enrollment of the command was 10,000 men and six pieces of artillery. The largest brigades were those of Vaughn and Echols. But on account of furloughs and for other reasons the aggregate force present was only 4,000. Witcher's brigade was 215 strong and Echols' 662.

On April 2d General Echols began a movement to unite with the army of Northern Virginia, but on reaching Christiansburg, Va., on the 10th, he received a dispatch announcing the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox Court House. General Duke has written, "Strange as the declaration may sound now, there was not one of the 6,000 or 7,000 men then gathered at Christiansburg who had entertained the slightest thought that such an event could happen. . . . That the army of Northern Virginia, with Lee at its head, would ever surrender, had never entered our minds." After a night of excitement and discussion around blazing camp-fires, part of the force proceeded under General Echols to attempt a junction with Johnston's army in North Carolina, while many returned to their homes satisfied that the war was over. Those from West Virginia who went on and those who returned, as well as those who surrendered at Appomattox and with the various commands in the Shenandoah valley, in time mainly accepted citizenship in the new State born in the throes of war, and after enduring the hardships and persecution which followed their home-coming, and the annoyances of adverse legislation, resumed the stations to which their worth entitled them in a free commonwealth and a reunited nation.