Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/52

 HILE these events were occurring at Harper's Ferry, considerable numbers of Marylanders were rendezvousing at Richmond. The enrolled men commanded by Colonel Trimble, called out by the board of police commissioners, were drilled in a more or less efficient way in Baltimore, until the meeting of the legislature at Frederick, when they were disbanded. Johnson's company, at the same time, having left Frederick and gone to the Point of Rocks, furnished the nucleus around which gathered the men thus dismissed by the police authorities. They formed the eight companies mustered into the service of the Confederate States by Lieutenant-Colonel George Deas. But the volunteer companies, the Baltimore City Guard, the Maryland Guard, the Independent Grays, were as well instructed, as well officered as any American volunteers ever are, and some of them had historical reputations to maintain, for their companies had fought at North Point. They, therefore, regarded themselves as superior to the undrilled crowd that Captain Johnson was "licking into shape at Harper's Ferry," as they put it, and proceeded to Richmond, where they at once put themselves in accord with the Virginia authorities. Marylanders were to be embodied into three regiments, armed and mustered into the service of Virginia, who was to adopt them. In carrying out this plan Governor Letcher issued commissions to Francis Q. Thomas, ex-captain United States army, as colonel of the First; to Bradley T. Johnson as lieutenant-colonel of the Second, and to Alden