letter from Colonel Pegram to General Garnett, also returned, bringing me to following orders from General Garnett:

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT N. W. A.,
Camp at Laurel Hill, July 11, 1861.

Colonel SCOTT,

Commanding Regiment en route to Laurel Hill:

COLONEL: General Garnett directs that you return to Beverly and take up the position in the Buckhannon road requested by Colonel Pegram, and defend your position to the last, if you should be attached.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES L. CORLEY,

Captain, C. S. Army, Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

Take some of Captain Moorman's men with you from Leadsville Church, and inform me by a mounted express of any movement of the enemy of which you are positive.

By order of General Garnett:

JAMES L. CORLEY,

Captain, C. S. Army.

And for fear I should not know the point in the Buckhannon road which Colonel Pegram requested me to occupy, General Garnett sent me, with the order, the following extract from Colonel Pegram's letter to him, viz:

I have reason to believe the enemy is trying to work his way to my rear by the road which comes into this turnpike, one and a half miles this side of Beverly. I have therefore suggested to Colonel Scott that he take position with his regiment on that road.

Respectfully, &c.,

JOHN PEGRAM,

Lieutenant-Colonel, &c.

From this extract and these orders there was no room for mistaking " the position in the Buckhannon road requested by Colonel Pegram." It was at the junction of the county road and the Buckhannon turnpike. You will observe the stringency of these orders. They gave me to discretion. Let us analyze them:

1. I was ordered to take position in the Buckhannon road, as requested by Colonel Pegram.

2. I was ordered to defend my position to the last, if I should be attached.

3. In case there should be any movement of the enemy of which I was positive, I was not authorized do use my discretion whether or not I should leave my position to meet or counteract that movement, but I was to inform General Garnett by a mounted express, and of course wait for orders.

There were but two contingencies on which I should have felt justified in leaving my position.

1. If Colonel Pegram had requested me to go anywhere else, as he was the commanding officer at the fort, and was presumed to know from his pickets and scouts more of the movements of the enemy than any one else, and as I had been placed in my position at his request, I should have abandoned it and gone anywhere else he desired on a like request, presuming that my doing so would meet with the approbation of General Garnett.

2. The only other contingency on which I should have felt justified in quitting my position was, if I should ascertain by any means that the enemy would not come along the county road which I was ordered to guard and along which Colonel Pegram thought it was almost certain they would come. I heard the firing on the mountain in the direction of Colonel Pegram's camp. Indeed, it had commenced before I had received the foregoing orders. It was at first straggling, as if pickets