Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/118

104 battalion. When the battery reported Colonel Lee was shocked that such a company of immature boys should be sent to him while on the march against the enemy. He, however, took the situation in at once, took hold of the company and drilled and disciplined it in season and out of season, nearly exhausting-officers, men, drivers and horses in whipping them into shape for service. The strictest discipline was continuously enforced, and the colonel soon saw he was not very popular with the new company in fact, he saw he was greatly condemned by officers and the entire company; but there was no let-up in his effort to prepare the company for the battle to take place in the near future. In ten or twelve days after the "boy company" joined the battalion it was facing the army of General Pope on the battlefield of Second Manassas, but the strenuous attention given the company had fitted them by drill in the handling of their guns. The colonel nursed them all the time; his post of duty was with them as much as he could spare the time. On August 30, 1862, the battalion of artillery was in the centre of the Confederate line of battle, General Longstreet's corps being on its right and General Jackson's on the left. The eighteen guns were all together during the battle, and the "boy company" was carried by the colonel close up to the enemy, firing on the flank of the troops attacking General Jackson in the famous railroad cut. The company of boys acted splendidly and did as well as any veteran battery in General Lee's army, but only a few of them were wounded in the battle.

As stated, Captain Parker was a very religious man, and he often held prayer-meeting in the camp at night after a day's march. In the great roar of the battle of Second Manassas, when every gun on both sides, artillery and infantry, were being fired rapidly by the contending forces, the columns of the enemy upon which the battalion of artillery was playing began to waver, and to retreat, and finally were driven routed off the field. As the enemy broke, a little fourteen-year-old boy in the "boy company" was in the act of ramming a shell down his gun. The sight of the fleeing enemy was too much for him; he stopped pushing