the camp, and leaving him in that camp, has come to the home of her childhood to seek aid for him and his comrades, not because he is her husband, but because he is fighting the battles of his country, against a tyrant.’
He paid a high tribute to the patriotism and love of liberty which eminently characterized the people of Maryland. ‘They were fighting our battles,’ he said, ‘with halters round their necks.’
On the 29th Mrs. Johnson left Raleigh with her escort and her arms, and her route was a continued ovation. At every town, at every station, the people had gathered to see the woman who was arming her husband's regiment, and they overwhelmed her with enthusiasm and hearty sympathy. At Petersburg a substantial sum of money was handed to her, and stopping at Richmond she procured from John Letcher, governor of Virginia, a supply of camp-kettles, hatchets, axes, etc., and with the money in her hands, ordered forty-one wall tents made at once. On the 31st of May she left Richmond with her arms, ammunition and supplies. At Manassas Beauregard gave her an order to take any train she might find necessary for transportation and to hold all trains subject to her orders. She rode in the freight car on her boxes of rifles. Companies A and B had during her absence been moved up to Harper's Ferry to unite with the rest of the command, and on June 3, 1861. after an absence of ten days from camp, she returned and delivered to her husband the results of her energy, devotion and enthusiasm. The following receipt from the chief of ordnance of Stonewall Jackson's command has probably no parallel in the history of war:
Received, Ordnance Department, Harper's Ferry, Va., June 3, 1861, of Mrs. Bradley T. Johnson, Five Hundred Mississippi rifles (cal. 54) Ten Thousand cartridges and Thirty-five Hundred caps.
G. N. Cochrane, Master of Ordnance.
Such an incident of courage, of heroism, of devotion and of enthusiasm thrilled that army through every rank and fiber. Colonel Jackson, then in command at Harper's Ferry, afterwards the world-famous ‘Stonewall,’ called on her, with his staff, and thanked her. The officers of the battalion in meeting:
Resolved—That the thanks of the Maryland Line be tendered to Mrs. Captain Bradley T. Johnson for her earnest, patriotic and successful efforts in arming and equipping the Maryland Line.
Resolved—That we, the officers, pledge ourselves and for our men that the arms she has obtained shall at the close of the war be returned to the State of North Carolina, without stain or dishonor.
Resolved—That these resolutions be signed by the officers of the meeting and presented to Mrs. Johnson.
James R. Herbert, President. I. G. W. Harriott, Secretary.
She forthwith returned to Richmond for clothes and the tents. She secured cloth for uniforms, by permission of Governor Letcher, by purchasing it from the mills where it was manufactured for the State of Virginia, and she paid for making it up into uniforms. Shoes, blankets and underclothes were supplied by Col. Larkin Smith, quartermaster-general; and the tents had been ordered on her way back from North Carolina. On June 29th she started back for camp with forty-one tents, and uniforms, underclothes and shoes for five hundred men. She had paid out ten thousand dollars, the contribution of enthusiastic North Carolinians and Virginians.
Chapter 4: Marylanders enlist, and organize to defend Virginia and the Confederacy.
While these events were occurring at Harper's Ferry, considerable numbers of Marylanders were rendezvousing at Richmond. The enrolled men commanded by Colonel Trimble, called out by the board of police commissioners, were drilled in a more or less efficient way in Baltimore, until the meeting of the legislature at Frederick, when they were disbanded. Johnson's company, at the same time, having left Frederick and gone to the Point of Rocks, furnished the nucleus around which gathered the men thus dismissed by the police authorities. They formed the eight companies mustered into the service of the Confederate States by Lieutenant-Colonel George Deas. But the volunteer companies, the Baltimore City Guard, the Maryland Guard, the Independent Grays, were as well instructed, as well officered as any American volunteers ever are, and some of them had historical reputations to maintain, for their companies had fought at North Point. They, therefore, regarded themselves as superior to the undrilled crowd that Captain Johnson was ‘licking into shape at Harper's Ferry,’ as they put it, and proceeded to Richmond, where they at once put themselves in accord with the Virginia authorities. Marylanders were to be embodied into three regiments, armed and mustered into the service of Virginia, who was to adopt them. In carrying out this plan Governor Letcher issued commissions to Francis Q. Thomas, ex-captain United States army, as colonel of the First; to Bradley T. Johnson as lieutenant-colonel of the Second, and to Alden Weston, major of the Third. It was in the plan to consolidate these three into one if they failed to fill up into full regiments. Captain Johnson promptly declined the commission sent him by Governor Letcher, refusing to enter the military service of Virginia on the distinct ground that Maryland must be represented by Maryland regiments, and for Marylanders to accept service under Virginia would be to sacrifice the rights of the State to the services of her own sons. It was their duty, he believed, to give their own State the benefit of their service and of such reputation as they might be fortunate enough to win. Following this line of duty, he had caused the eight Harper's Ferry companies to be mustered into the army of the Confederate States, and he urged by every means in his power the consolidation of all Marylanders into the Maryland Line. This proved to be utterly impracticable. They were all volunteers; away from home there was no State sentiment, no home opinion to direct or control their conduct, and they selected their associates and comrades from contiguity, from friendship and from relationship. Men of Maryland descent were scattered all over the Confederacy, and thousands of young men who got through the lines sought out their relations and kinsmen in nearly every regiment of the army. The Maryland Line was the ideal of Lieut.-Col. George H. Steuart and of Maj. Bradley T. Johnson, and for two years they labored to collect the Marylanders. All influences from home were directed to the same end. The flag, made in Baltimore and brought over by Hetty Carey, was inscribed ‘First Regiment Maryland Line.’ But not until 1863 was any considerable force embodied under that name.
In the early summer of 1861 the way to Virginia was open and thousands of ardent youth left home and friends to fight for the South. In a few months, however, Maryland was hermetically sealed. Her bays were patrolled by gun boats, her rivers were picketed, and a barrier of bayonets sought to keep back the current of sympathy that day and night flowed to the South. All over the State, the women, irrepressible as ever in times of excitement, flaunted the Confederate red and white in the faces of the army of occupation. The babies wore red and white socks, the girls red and white ribbons—with red and white bouquets at their girdles and on their hearts, the young lads red and white cravats. The larger boys were sent South by their mothers, sisters and sweethearts. Regular lines of communication were established, with stations and passwords and signs for the ‘underground,’ as it was called. They made their way by steamer down to the Patuxent—on to the eastern shore. They bought, ‘borrowed’ or ‘captured’ small boats, sail or with oars, and they put out in the darkness over the waters to find the way to Dixie. The gun boats searched bay and inlet with their strong lights and their small boats. Sometimes they caught the emigres and more frequently they did not. When they did the Old Capitol and Point Lookout military prisons were the swift doom of the unfortunates, where they languished for months, half-clad and nearly starved. This blockade running went on over the Potomac from the Chesapeake to the District of Columbia, right under the surveillance of the Federal authorities. When the watch became too vigilant and the pickets too close along the rivers, the Marylanders made their way up through the western part of the State, where the sentiment was generally Union, and forded the river from Hancock up to the mountains. Working through the mountains of West Virginia, through the perils of the bushwhackers and Union men, ten thousand times worse than from Union pickets, they made their way, ragged, barefoot, starving, down to some camp in the valley of Virginia, where they were welcomed with warm hearts and open hands. During all
