Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/105

 Early in the spring of 1861, after the old " volunteer companies" of the State had been called into service by Governor Letcher, many of the yonng men of Lexington and the county of Rock- bridge, in answer to the Governor's call for more troops, determined to organize another company. They selected John McCausland, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, as their captain, and were sworn into service on the 2Qth of April, 1861. About this time Cap- tain McCausland received from the Governor a commission as colo- nel of cavalry, and was sent to West Virginia, where he served with distinction, and became a brigadier-general.

To fill the vacancy thus caused, on May i, 1861, the new com- pany of artillery chose Rev. William N. Pendleton, D. D., as their captain. Dr. Pendleton was at the time rector of the Episcopal church in Lexington, and was well-known in the State as prominent in ecclesiastical matters, and also to have graduated in 1830 at West Point, where he was a contemporary of many men who were already prominent in one or other of the two armies which were then organizing. He had been a fellow-student of Generals Joseph E. Johnston and Robert E. Lee, and of the newly-elected President of the Confederacy, Mr. Davis.

Some time after this company was organized another company formed near Fairfield, and attached to the Fifty-second Virginia regiment of infantry, under Colonel John B. Baldwin, was equipped as an artillery company under Rev. John Miller, a Presbyterian minister, as captain, and this was known as the Second Rockbridge Artillery, and did good service in the war.

The material of which the First Rockbridge Artillery was com- posed, and the military antecedents and ecclesiastical prominence of Captain Pendleton, created great enthusiasm in the company, and afterwards brought into it many young men whose engagements at the University of Virginia and other seminaries of learning in the State had kept them from enlisting earlier in the service. The other commissioned officers, whilst not at that time well-known out- side their county, were there known to be educated gentlemen of high standing, socially and personally, and all of them afterwards at- tained to prominence in the army.

Captain Pendleton was the only man, excepting Sergeant Graham, in the company, who had any scientific knowledge of military mat- ters. His course at West Point Academy, and his subsequent ser- vice in the army, had fitted him well to organize this company, and