Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/31

Rh Col. D. Coleman; Fortieth (heavy artillery), Col. J. J. Hedrick; Forty-first (cavalry), Col. J. A. Baker.

&quot;Thus,&quot; comments Gordon, &quot;the State had, in January, 1862, forty-one regiments armed and equipped and transferred to the Confederate States government.&quot;

Long before these latter regiments were all mustered in, the earlier ones had received their &quot;bloody christenings. Some one has said that in the drama of secession North Carolina s accession was the epilogue, but it is equally true that in the tragedy of battle that fol lowed she furnished the prologue; for within two months after its officers were commissioned, the First regiment was engaged in the first battle of the war, and one of its members was summoned to form the advance guard of the new Confederate army that then began to enlist under the black flag of Death.

The long struggle that was to cost North Carolina all its wealth, except its land; that was to overthrow its social system; that was to crush to mute despair its home-keepers; that was to cause the almost reckless pouring out of the blood of as proudly submissive, as grimly persistent, as coolly dauntless a body of soldiers as ever formed line of battle opened at Bethel Church, Va. Bethel is only a short distance from Yorktown. It is not a little singular that the great contest with our brethren began only ten miles from the spot where the weary struggle of our fathers culminated.

This battle—if with the memory of Gettysburg and Chickamauga still fresh, we can call it a battle was fought on the loth of June, 1861. Being the first serious fight of the war, it of course attracted attention out of proportion to its importance. Anticipating attack, Col. D. H. Hill had, with the First North Carolina regiment, thrown up an enclosed earthwork on the bank of Marsh creek. The Confederate position was held by the following forces: Three companies of the Third Virginia, under Lieut-Col. W. D. Stuart, occupied a slight earth-