Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/75

Rh sentiment of love for home. But "Maryland" touched too deeply the feeling of the heart to do for camp or march. "Gay and Happy" was the air that thrilled souls, and it rang like the drum-beat of the assembly or the bugle sound to the charge. So the march of the Marylanders was announced by the ringing song of "Gay and Happy."

Johnston understood perfectly that as soon as the spring sun dried up the roads and the fields of Virginia, McClellan must move on him. The latter had two hundred thousand men, Johnston forty thousand, so for more than a month he was clearing out his camp and sending impedimenta to the rear. Early in March, 1862, he received notice from his spies in Washington that McClellan was about to strike. On the 8th he began his retrograde to the line of the Rappahannock, still keeping his pickets out on their usual posts, to present the appearance of being in the same position and to prevent intelligence leaking through to the Union commander. Early on the morning of the 9th the first battalion of the First Maryland, four companies, under Lieutenant-Colonel Johnson moved out to Burke's Station to relieve the Thirteenth Virginia, whose term of picket had expired. They reached Burke's before noon and Johnson reported to Walker of the Thirteenth that he was ready to relieve him. The two officers rode along the line, posting the reliefs and sending the Virginians back to their camp, when all at once on the opposite line of hills appeared a line of skirmishers, and simultaneously a squadron of cavalry rattled down the road. Company F, First Lieut. William D. Hough in command, had been posted on a hill, just below the road, in front of a wood and a fence. As soon as Hough saw the cavalry coming, he very properly made for the fence, for he had no bayonets. But the horsemen, a squadron of the Eighth Illinois, were on him before he got there. He turned and made a gallant fight. Second Lieut. Joseph H. Stewart jerked a rifle