THE

THE CONFEDERATE OF '61

BY ALLEN C. REDWOOD

Fifty-fifth Virginia Regiment, Confederate States Army

HE ill-fated attempt of John Brown at Harper's Ferry was significant in more directions than the one voiced in the popular lyric in the Southern States. The militia system had fallen into a condition little less than farcical, but the effect of Brown's undertaking was to awaken the public sense to an appreciation of the defenseless condition of the community, in the event of better planned and more comprehensive demonstrations of the kind in the future.

Rural populations do not tend readily to organization, and the Southerner was essentially rural, but under the impetus above indicated, and with no immediate thought of ulterior service, the people, of the border States especially, began to form military companies in almost every county, and to uniform, arm, and drill them.

The habit and temper of the men, no less than the putative intent of these organizations, gave a strong bias toward the cavalry arm. In the cities and larger towns the other branches were also represented, though by no means in the usual proportion in any regular establishment. In Virginia the mounted troops probably outnumbered the infantry and artillery combined. All were imperfectly armed or equipped for anything like actual campaigning, but at the beginning of hostilities a fair degree of drill and some approach to discipline had been attained, and these bodies formed a nucleus about which the hastily assembled levies, brought into the field by the call to arms, formed themselves, and doubtless received a degree of "stiffening" from such contact.

On the day before they were mustered in as Company A, Fifth Regiment of Georgia Volunteer Infantry, the Clinch Rifles of Augusta were photographed at their home town. A. K. Clark, the boy in the center with the drum, fortunately preserved a copy of the picture. Just half a century later, he wrote: "I weighed only ninety-five pounds, and was so small that they would only take me as a drummer. Of the seventeen men in this picture, I am the only one living." Hardly two are dressed alike; they did not become "uniform" for many months. With the hard campaigning in the West and East, the weights of the men also became more uniform. The drummer-boy filled out and became a real soldier, and the stout man lying down in front lost much of his superfluous avoirdupois in the furious engagements where it earned its title as a fighting regiment." The Confederate armies were not clad in the uniform gray till the second year of the war. So variegated were the costumes on both sides at the first battle of Bull Run that both Confederates and Federals frequently fired upon their own men. There are instances recorded where the colonel of a regiment notified his supports to which side he belonged before daring to advance in front of them.

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