Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/114

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100
CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY.


nected by blood or in any way with the State, and most of the enlisted men were foreigners.

The Third regiment, under Colonel DeWitt, was hotly engaged at Cedar Run, and lost heavily. Major Kennedy and over one hundred men were killed and wounded. They also lost over thirty-three per cent of the command at Sharpsburg, killed and wounded.

The First regiment of cavalry, Lieutenant- Colonel Miller and Maj. James M. Deems, served under Generals Buford and Sigel in the army of the Potomac, in 1862.

The Potomac home brigade, Col. William P, Maulsby, and the Purnell Legion, were enlisted and organized as home guards for home service and never to leave the State. Colonel Maulsby, of the First regiment, and commanding the Potomac home brigade, was as high spirited and as chivalric a knight as ever set lance in rest for the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher, for he was a Marylander by descent, by tradition and in every fiber of his being. Therefore, when the army of the Potomac moved toward its enemy, Maulsby's Potomac home brigade moved with it, on its own ardent demand. Its muskets would have marched had there been no men to carry them, for the spirit of the commander permeates and electrifies all under him, and the fire of the head and heart heats all the members.

The Maryland artillery battalion, under Maj. Edward R. Petherbridge, was before Richmond in the artillery reserve under Colonel Hunt. At the New Bridge over the Chickahominy, Battery B once had an artillery duel with the First Maryland artillery, Confederate, in which it fired over six hundred shots, doing considerable damage.