regiment lost 375 men, and to-day cannot start 400 for duty."[1]
After General Johnston’s wound at Seven Pines, General Lee was put in chief command of the Confederate forces. Wishing to strike McClellan a decisive blow, and thus relieve the pressure on Richmond, Lee began to devise means to increase his army. Hence his attention was at once directed to the fifteen North Carolina regiments already mentioned as raised by Governor Clark for the defense of his own State against the Federal army at New Bern, and then in camp in North Carolina, but not yet armed. Major Gordon, who is thoroughly familiar with the affairs of the adjutant-general s office at that time, gives the following account of the negotiations for these regiments:
On or about the night that General Martin received his commission as brigadier-general, the governor of North Carolina received a communication from the war department of the Confederate States giving him in full the plan of the campaign to crush McClellan s army, and asking the governor s co-operation with the North Carolina troops in camp, but not then turned over to the Confederate government, and also attempting to reconcile him to the moving of all the other troops in the State to the State of Virginia. The statement above that the war department would communicate the plans of one of the most famous campaigns of the world more than a month before a shot was fired, might, without explanation, seem incredible. The State of North Carolina had at this time fifteen regiments, each nearly 1,000 strong, and none of them turned over to the Confederate government. These troops were raised on the governor s call for the defense of the State, and he could have kept them for that service if so disposed. This was the only body of reserve troops in the Confederacy, at least no other State had anything approximating to it, so it was very important for General Lee to receive this reinforcement. Hence every plan was fully made known to the governor of North Carolina. In brief, the plan, as told me by my
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- ↑ Our Living and Our Dead.
