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25 CHAPTER TWO • 1861 15 September–29 December 1861 On 25 June 1861, Captain Tom Carter wrote the commandant of the Virginia Military Institute that he had “a company of untrained men, about seventy in number. . . . My men are uniformed & thoroughly equipped.” One week later, the King William Artillery arrived in Richmond, where a correspondent for the Richmond Daily Dispatch described the men as “stout, able-bodied fellows.” On 2 July the unit, led by Carter, mustered into Confederate service on Capitol Square. For the next two months, the battery encamped on the grounds of Richmond College on the outskirts of the city. There, Carter trained a battalion of artillery that consisted of his own and two other batteries. On 1 September, when its initial period of training came to an end, the King William Artillery received its first guns and encamped at nearby Allen’s Grove. In early October, Carter and his battery left the Richmond area for northern Virginia, where, after a two-day journey by train, they joined the main Confederate army near Manassas Junction.1 Following the Battle of Bull Run on 21 July, which Carter and his battery had missed, the opposing armies settled into a relatively peaceful period . With the exception of the small fight at Ball’s Bluff on 21 October and some skirmishing between cavalry units, both sides spent most of their time fortifying and watching each other’s movements. Carter and his men initially encamped near Fairfax Station on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad and later occupied positions at Union Mill near Bull Run Creek and at Davis’s Ford near the Occoquan River. On 2 November the King William Artillery was formally attached to Robert Rodes’s brigade in Earl Van Dorn’s division in the Confederate Army of the Potomac. For 1. THC to Francis H. Smith, 25 June 1861, Thomas Henry Carter Alumni File, VMI; RDD, 3 July 1861; Thomas Catesby Jones, “War Reminiscences,” VHS; Macaluso, Morris, Orange, and King William Artillery, 20. 26 • 1861 Carter, the remainder of 1861 was a period of adjustment as he got to know his men.2 k Fairfax Ct House Sunday Sept. 15th [1861] My darling Wife, I have only a moment to write to say that I have arrived safely & am well. I reached Manassas Thursday evening 4 P.M. having passed nearly two days & a night on the road. The rolling stock is in bad order from incessant use & the freight train laid over from time to time to avoid collision with the passenger. I reported the same evening to Johnston & encamped at Manassas until yesterday morning.3 Expecting to remain some days there I was in no hurry unfortunately to visit the Battle field & was suddenly ordered here to report to Beauregard.4 I passed Mitchell’s Ford on Bull Run a few hundred yards above Blackburn’s Ford where the fight of [the] 18th occurred. The country [is] open rolling & beautiful in scenery. Fortifications abound at Manassas & Bull run. Troops are posted all through this country & the number must be large. In the last few days an advance of the whole army has been made. Johnston’s Headquarters are still at Manassas. Beauregard is here. I am about to report to him now & am as dirty as a pig, the baggage having been sent by rail to Fairfax Station 3 1/2 miles distant. Wagon transportation is most difficult. The men encamped in the open air without tents last night. I am in Dorsey’s room. He moves today with his 4th Brigade (of which he is Medical Director now) to Falls Church.5 Hall’s Hill was taken night before last which is 2. Macaluso, Morris, Orange, and King William Artillery, 20–21; OR 5:936, 960–61. 3. General Joseph Eggleston Johnston (1807–91) of Virginia was the fourth-ranking general in the Confederate army (Warner, Generals in Gray, 161–62). 4. General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (1818–93) of Louisiana commanded the Confederate forces in Charleston, South Carolina, that forced the surrender of Fort Sumter and, with Joseph E. Johnston, led the army that won the Battle of First Bull Run. In September he commanded the Confederate Army of the Potomac (Eicher and Eicher, High Commands, 123–24). 5. John Syng Dorsey Cullen (1832–93) was a prewar physician who practiced in Richmond, Va.. Dorsey Cullen served briefly in the 1st Virginia Infantry before taking up his duties as a surgeon in the Confederate army on 3 May 1861. In...

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