Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/25

 Heroes of the old Camden District, S. C. 19

Lieutenant Colonel; and Cadwalader Jones, of York, as Major. Colonel Dunnovant had been Lieutenant-Colonel of the Palmetto regiment in Mexico.

The Twelfth, with the Thirteenth and Fourteenth, commenced its service on the coast, and was present at the bombardment of Hilton Head, but was not actively engaged. In April, 1862, it was ordered to Virginia with the Thirteenth and Fourteenth, then constituting Gregg's brigade, and proceeded to Milford Station, where it formed a part of what was known as the Army of the Rappahannock under General Joseph R. Anderson. This was an army of observation of McDowell's force at Fredericksburg, which was intended to co ope- rate with McClellan by an advance upon Richmond from the north. This plan Jackson frustrated by his victories in the Valley, and in the last of May the Army of the Rappahannock fell back to Rich- mond. On reaching Richmond, Major-General A. P. Hill was as- signed to its command, and the Army of the Rappahannock became, what I trust it is not immodest for those of us whose fortune it was to serve in its ranks to say, "the famous Light Division." The division was moved out to take part in the great battle of Seven Pines on the 3ist May, 1862, but was not actually engaged. The first actual engagement of the Twelfth was in the Seven Days' battles around Richmond. It was the fortune of the First, which had (with Orr's rifles) joined Gregg's brigade just before those battles, and the Twelfth to commence together the battle of Cold Harbor on the 27th June, 1862; and from that time to the close of the war there was a feeling of mutual confidence and regard between these two regiments, which was increased as the exigencies of the service again and again threw them together in the most desperate conflicts. The loss of the brigade in this battle was 854 out of about 2,500 men carried into action. In the Twelfth, Lieutenant J. W. DeLancy was killed and Captains Bookter, Miller, McMeekin and Vorlandigham were wounded. The loss of the regiment was 138 17 killed and 121 wounded. At Frazier's Farm on the 3Oth the regi- ment lost seven wounded. The brigade was not engaged at Malvern Hill. Its losses in these battles was altogether 971 out of the 2,500 with which it commenced them.

Then followed the great battle of the war of Gregg's brigade, the second day of the Second Manassas, in which the most of the fight- ing on the Confederate side was done by this brigade, and of which a Northern military writer describing this battle has said: " In South- ern histories and by Southern firesides the brave deeds that Southern