Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/35



HE six weeks that intervened between Bethel and First Manassas were weeks of ceaseless activity. Regiments marched and countermarched; the voice of the drill-master was heard from hundreds of camps; quartermasters and commissary officers hurried from place to place in search of munitions and stores; North Carolina was hardly more than one big camp, quivering with excitement, bustling with energy, over flowing with patriotic ardor.

Toward the middle of July expectant eyes were turned to Virginia. The Confederate army under Generals Johnston and Beauregard was throwing itself into position to stop the &quot;On to Richmond&quot; march of the Federal army under Gen. Irvin McDowell. Two "armies vastly greater than had ever before fought on this continent, and the largest volunteer armies ever assembled since the era of standing armies&quot; were approaching each other. Battle is always horrible, but this was most horrible in that these two armies were sprung from the same stock, spoke the same tongue, rejoiced in the same traditions, gloried in the same history, and differed only in the construction of the Constitution.

In this great battle, so signally victorious for the Confederate arms, North Carolina had fewer troops engaged than it had in any other important battle of the armies in Virginia. Col. W. W. Kirkland s Eleventh (after ward Twenty-first) regiment, with two companies —