Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/491



PURCHASE OF ARMS—ORGANIZATION OF STATE TROOPS—JEFFERSON DAVIS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF—TROOPS AT CORINTH—FIRST HOSTILITIES ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

DJUTANT-GENERAL W. L. SYKES of Mississippi, in his report to Governor Pettus, dated Jackson, January 18, 1861, for the year ending December, 1860, and from January 1, 1861, to January 17th inclusive, among other things, said: "The Mississippi legislature, being duly impressed with a sense of her insecurity, and aroused by the action of John Brown and his confederates at Harper's Ferry in their attempt to stain and drench the soil of Virginia in innocent blood, made an appropriation in December, 1859, of $150,000 for the purchase of arms in order to prepare to meet effectually such a fanatical raid, should an attempt be made to perpetrate such an act within her borders. Within the past two months the political excitement awakened by the election of a Black Republican to the Presidency being unprecedented and without parallel in this country,  companies are organized and have been organizing at the rate of seven or eight per week, numbering from fifty to sixty men. The number of companies organized up to the 16th of January, 1861, dating from January 1, 1860, amounts to 65. The number of commissions issued to officers of volunteer companies approximates 255. Of this number, 65 were issued to captains and 190 to lieutenants. The number of men regularly organized into uniformed companies of volunteers amounts to 2,027, armed. Of the thirty-eight companies unarmed, allowing 50 men for an average of