Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/192

 186 Southern Historical Society Papers.

to be enlisted in the service of the State, for the term of twelve months, one regiment of six hundred and forty privates, to be divided into eight companies.

Under this resolution, Governor Pickens commissioned and em- powered Colonel Maxcy Gregg, who afterwards fell as Brigadier- General at Fredericksburg, to organize a regiment, which, however, was enlisted but for six months and not twelve. This regiment was formed by volunteer companies from other parts of the State, which had been impatientl)^ waiting the permission and opportunity, if not of relieving the volunteer companies of Charleston, of at least sharing with them the duties, and perchance the dangers and honors of the service. This regiment — which afterwards, upon its reorganization, it fell to my fortune to command in some of the greatest battles of the war, and whose colors, carried from Fort Sumter and planted in the town of Gettysburg, are now leaning on my desk as I write this — was, I believe, the first regimental organization of the Army of North- ern Virginia.

As I have mentioned, the Legislature had provided for the raising of a division of two brigades, the regiments of which were numbered from one on. The Convention regiment had very naturally assumed to itself, in accordance with the fact, the designation of the First South Carolina volunteers, a name to which it clung, and which, by an order of the Secretary of War, it was authorized to retain, with the colors, upon its reorganization after the expiration of its six months' term, not- withstanding the fact that another regiment of the State — the first of those organized under the act of the Legislature of the 17th Decem- ber, i860 — bore the same designation. This was unfortunate, but I think I can truthfully say that neither regiment found cause to be ashamed of the name borne by the other. We fell upon a modtis Vivendi, by calling our's Gregg's First, and were proud of the addi- tion, and the other Hagood's First — a title doubly dear to the latter, as it was commanded by two distinguished officers of that name. General, afterwards Governor Hagood, and his brilliant young bro- ther, who commanded the regiment before he was twenty-one. Both of these regiments, together with the Second, under Colonel, after- wards Major-Cieneral, J. B. Kershaw, were present at the bombard- ment and fall of Fort Sumter ; but the infantry were not engaged in that first battle of the war.

On April 15th, two days after the battle of Fort Sumter, President Lincoln issued his proclamation for seventy-five thousand militia for three months, which Governor Letcher answered on the 17th by a