Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/73

 N November, 1861, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, then in command of the Confederate army of the Potomac, withdrew from the posts of Mason's and Munson's Hills, established by Beauregard, having information that McClellan was about to sweep them in. Beauregard had established a capital secret service, and his spies in Washington, in the departments and in McClellan 's headquarters, kept his headquarters perfectly advised of the intentions of General McClellan. They had reported in time McDowell's projected movement on Bull Run, which resulted in the first battle of Manassas. In November Johnston withdrew from the line of Fairfax Court House to Centreville, in front of Bull Run, and in a month fell back to Bull Run, where he put his troops in camp for the winter. He made his men cover themselves in log huts, which were comfortable, but too warm and ill- ventilated for troops in the field.

During all this period the Marylanders furnished a singular exception to the rest of the army. The soldiers in the Southern regiments were suffering from mumps, measles and whooping cough, which became epidemic with them; the Thirteenth North Carolina, for instance, which came up after the battle of Manassas thirteen hundred rank and file for duty, became so reduced by these diseases that it could not parade enough men for camp guard, and was sent to the mountains to recruit its sick. But the First Maryland had none of these diseases. It lost a few men, not ten in all, by typhoid fever, but it was exempt from the numerous complaints that afflicted