Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/57

Rh into the Twenty-first Virginia regiment. It served its year with great eclat and was the crack company of that part of the army. The other three were united to the battalion at Harper's Ferry. Virginia troops had by that time been taken en masse into the army of the Confederacy. That battalion was reorganized into six companies, so as to equalize them above the minimum required by the law of the Confederacy, and thus the First Maryland regiment was formed, with Capt. Arnold Elzey, late United States artillery, as colonel; Capt. George H. Steuart, late United States cavalry, as lieutenant-colonel, and Bradley T. Johnson as major. It consisted of 500 men armed with Mrs. Johnson's rifles, calibre 54, and 220 men (the three Richmond companies) with Springfield muskets and bayonets. The drill and style of the Richmond companies set the standard for the rest, and during their whole service there never was anything but the most devoted comradeship and the most generous feeling. The only rivalry was "Who shall get there first!"

Soon afterward Capt. R. Snowden Andrews mustered into Confederate service his battery, which during the next four years won undying fame on a hundred fields as the First Maryland artillery. Next came the Baltimore light artillery, known later as the Second Maryland, Capt. John B. Brockenbrough. The Latrobe artillery, Third Maryland, Capt. Henry B. Latrobe; and the Chesapeake, Fourth Maryland, Capt. William Brown, were organized and mustered into the service early in 1862 and served with distinction, the Third Maryland in the army of the Southwest with Johnston and Kirby Smith, and the Fourth Maryland in the army of Northern Virginia. Capt. George R. Gaither brought to Virginia a part of the Howard Dragoons, a troop of which he had been captain in Howard county, with horses, arms and accoutrements, and mustered them into the First Virginia cavalry, Col. J. E. B. Stuart, as