s and unappreciated. He shares more
dangers (having to go from point to point during battle to give
orders) than most of the officers, still he is cut off, by army
regulation, from promotion, the ambition and goal of all officers.
Colonel Kennedy, of the Second, appointed as his Adjutant E.E. Sill,
of Camden, while Colonel Nance, of the Third, gave the position to his
former Orderly Sergeant, Y.J. Pope, of Newberry. Colonel Aiken, of
the Seventh, appointed as Adjutant Thomas M. Childs, who was killed at
Sharpsburg. Colonel Elbert Bland then had Lieutenant John R. Carwile,
of Edgefield, to fill the position during the remainder of the
service, or until the latter was placed upon the brigade staff.
Colonel Henagan made Lieutenant Colin M. Weatherly, of Bennettsville,
S.C., Adjutant of the Eighth. All were young men of splendid physique,
energetic, courteous, and brave. They had the love and confidence of
the entire command. W.C. Hariss, Adjutant of the Third Battalion, was
from Laurens. Of the Fifteenth, both were good officers, but as they
were not with the brigade all the while, I am not able to do them
justice.

The troops of Lee were now at the zenith of their perfection and
glory. They looked upon themselves as invincible, and that no General
the North could put in the field could match our Lee. The cavalry of
Stuart and Hampton had done some remarkably good fighting, and they
were now looked upon as an indispensable arm of the service. The
cavalry of the West were considered more as raiders than fighters,
but our dismounted cavalry was depended upon with almost as much
confidence as our infantry. This was new tactics of Lee's, never
before practiced in any army of the world. In other times, where the
cavalry could not charge and strike with their sabres, they remained
simply spectators. But Lee, in time of battle, dismounted them, and
they, with their long-ranged carbines, did good and effective service.

Grant had been foiled and defeated at Vicksburg. At Holly Springs,
Chickasaw Bayou, Yazo Pass, and Millikin's Bend he had been
successfully met and defeated. The people of West Virginia, that
mountainous region of the old commonwealth, had ever been loyal to the
Union, and now formed a new State and was admitted into the Union on
the 20th of April, 1863, under the name of "West Virginia." Here it
is well to notice a strange condition of facts that prevailed over the
whole South, and that is the loyalty to the Uni