Virginia 4th Infantry Regiment

 


HISTORICAL NOTES:

    On assuming command at Harper's Ferry, Johnston had under him the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Tenth, Thirteenth and Twenty-seventh Virginia regiments of infantry; the Second and Eleventh Mississippi; the Fourth Alabama; a Maryland and a Kentucky battalion; four companies of Virginia artillery, of four guns each, but without caissons, horses or harness; and the First regiment of Virginia cavalry, about 250 men, including Capt. Turner Ashby's company, temporarily attached to it by Colonel Jackson; about 5,200 effective men in all.

    As Johnston wrote, the troops were undisciplined, of course, also "badly armed and equipped-- several regiments being without accouterments; were almost destitute of ammunition, and, like all new troops assembled in large bodies, they were suffering very much from sickness; nearly 40 per cent. of the total being in the hospitals, there or elsewhere, from the effects of measles and mumps."

    Johnston, early in July, proceeded to organize four brigades of infantry: The First, a Virginia brigade, under Col. T. J. Jackson, was composed of the Second, Fourth, Fifth and Twenty-seventh Virginia regiments and Pendleton's Rockbridge artillery.

    Learning that Patterson was again preparing to cross the Potomac, Jackson was sent with his brigade to the vicinity of Martinsburg to support the cavalry, and at the same time protect and aid an agent of the government who was sent to select and remove locomotives from the Baltimore & Ohio railroad shops at Martinsburg, hauling them with horses along the turnpike through Winchester to the Manassas Gap railroad at Strasburg. Jackson was also instructed to destroy all Baltimore & Ohio rolling stock that could not be brought away. On June 22d, President Davis wrote General Johnston that if the enemy had withdrawn from his front to make an attack east of the Blue ridge, they would probably attempt to advance from Leesburg to seize the Manassas Gap railroad and turn Beauregard's left, and if he had timely information of this, he might make a flank attack through the passes of the Blue ridge, and in conjunction with Beauregard achieve a glorious and beneficial victory.

    The diary of Michael Reid Hanger of Company H is on line.

FIELD OFFICERS:

    Gen. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson

ASSIGNMENTS

BATTLES:

    Harper's Ferry

ROSTERS:

    Company F - The Grayson Dare Devils
    Company H - Rockbridge Rifles

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

REFERENCES:

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Confederate Military History - Virginia Volume
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