Grant had divided his army into three corps—­Second, under Major General W.S.  Hancock; Fifth, Major General G.K.  Warren; Sixth, Major General John Sedgwick—­all in camp near Culpepper Court House, while a separate corps, under Major General A.E.  Burnside, was stationed near the railroad crossing on the Rappahannock River.

Lee’s Army was divided as follows:  Rodes’, Johnston’s, and Early’s Divisions, under Lieutenant General Ewell, Second Corps; R.H.  Anderson’s, Heath’s, and Wilcox’s Divisions, under Lieutenant General A.P.  Hill, Third Corps.

Longstreet had no Major Generals under him as yet.  He had two divisions, McLaws’ old Division, under Brigadier General Kershaw, and Hood’s, commanded by Brigadier General Fields.  The division had been led through the East Tennessee campaign by General Jenkins, of South Carolina.  Also a part of a division under General Bushrod Johnston, of the Army of the West.

Grant had in actual numbers of all arms, equipped and ready for battle, one hundred and sixteen thousand eight hundred and eighty-six men.  He had forty-nine thousand one hundred and ninety-one more infantry and artillery than Lee and three thousand six hundred and ninety-seven more cavalry.  He had but a fraction less than double the forces of the latter.  With this disparity of numbers, and growing greater every day, Lee successfully combatted Grant for almost a year without a rest of a week from battle somewhere along his lines.  Lee had no reinforcements to call up, and no recruits to strengthen his ranks, while Grant had at his call an army of two million to draw from at will, and always had at his immediate disposal as many troops as he could handle in one field.  He not only outnumbered Lee, but he was far better equipped in arms, subsistence, transportation, and cavalry and artillery horses.  He had in his medical, subsistence, and quartermaster departments alone nineteen thousand one hundred and eighty-three, independent of his one hundred and sixteen thousand eight hundred and eighty-six, ready for the field, which he called non-combattants.  While these figures and facts are foreign to the “History of Kershaw’s Brigade,” still I give them as matters of general history, that the reader may better understand the herculean undertaking that confronted Longstreet when he joined his forces with those of Lee’s.  And as this was to be the deciding campaign of the war, it will be better understood by giving the strength and environment of each army.  The Second South Carolina Regiment was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Gaillard; the Third, by Colonel Jas. D, Nance; the Seventh, by Captain Jerry Goggans; the Eighth, by Colonel Henagan; the Fifteenth, by Colonel J.B.  Davis; the Third Battalion, by Captain Whiter.  The brigade was commanded by Colonel J.D.  Kennedy, as senior Colonel.