Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/162

142 can procure, and that arrangements be made for the fabrication of suitable ammunition. These are intended as precautionary measures, which can better be made now than upon the eve of an emergency, should it arise." On the 15th of June, Colonel Magruder, by authority from the governor, called into active service the Sixty-eighth and One Hundred and Fifteenth regiments of Virginia militia, to rendezvous at Yorktown on the 24th, fully organized. The commandant of the Norfolk navy yard was ordered on the 18th to furnish eight 32-pounders, carriages for ten 42-pounders, and four large launches and cutters, as early as possible, for the defenses of York river. On the 19th the steamer Northampton was transferred to the war department for an army transport on James river.

On the 20th Colonel Magruder issued a general order assigning troops to various posts in his department. Colonel Ewell was assigned to the duty of erecting fortifications in the vicinity of Williamsburg, in conjunction with Capt. A. L. Rives, of the engineers; Col. D. H. Hill, with his First North Carolina regiment, was assigned to the command of the post at Yorktown, with directions to submit further plans for its defense; Col. T. P. August, with his Fifteenth Virginia regiment, was assigned to Williamsburg, to prosecute the defensive works at Grove landing, Spratley's farm, King's mill and Tutter's Neck, under the supervision of Colonel Ewell and Captain Rives; Col. Charles A. Crump, with his Twenty-sixth Virginia regiment, was assigned to Gloucester point, and Col. J. G. Hodges, with the Fourteenth Virginia regiment, to Jamestown island.

Left in temporary command at Yorktown, Col. D. H. Hill wrote, June 15th, to General Lee: