settled country.  Meat was plentiful, but no bread, and any one who has ever felt the tortures of bread hunger may imagine the sufferings of the men.  For want of bread the meats became nauseating and repulsive.  The whole fault lay in having too many bosses and red tape in the Department at Richmond.  By order of these officials, all commissary supplies, even gathered in sight of the camps, had to be first sent to Richmond and issued out only on requisitions to the head of the departments.  The railroad facilities were bad, irregular, and blocked, while our wagons and teams were limited to one for each one hundred men for all purposes.  General Beauregard, now second in command, and directly in command of the First Army Corps of the Army of the Potomac, of which our brigade formed a part, wishing to concentrate his troops, ordered all to Flint Hill, three miles west of Fairfax Court House.  General Johnston, Commander-in-Chief, directed the movements of the whole army, but more directly the Second Army Corps, or the Army of the Shenandoah.  The army up to this time had not been put into divisions, commanded by Major Generals, nor corps, by Lieutenant Generals, but the two commanders divided nominally the army into two corps, each commanded by a full General—­Brigadier General Beauregard having been raised to the rank of full General the day after his signal victory at Manassas by President Davis.

[Illustration:  Brig.  Gen. James Connor Adjt.]

[Illustration:  Y.J.  Pope, Acting Asst.  Adjt.  Genl. of Kershaw’s Brigade]

[Illustration:  Brig.  Gen. John D. Kennedy.]

[Illustration:  Dr. Thos.  W. Salmond Surgeon of Kershaw’s Brigade.]

In the Confederate Army the grades of the Generals were different to those in the United States Army.  A brigade consisted of a number of regiments joined together as one body and commanded by a Brigadier General, the lowest in rank.  Four, more or less, brigades constituted a division, commanded by a Major General.  Three or four divisions constituted a corps, commanded by a Lieutenant General, and a separate army, as two or more corps, was commanded by a General, the highest in rank.  Their rank is the same, but the Seniors are those whose commissions had been granted first, and take precedence where two are together.  So it is with all officers in the army—­age is not taken into consideration, but the date of commission.  Where a brigade, from any cause, temporarily loses its commander, the Colonel with the oldest commission takes the command; where a division loses its Major General, the Senior Brigadier in that division immediately assumes command; and the same way in the corps and the army.  The Major General takes command of the corps where its commander is absent, and in case of absence, either temporary or permanent, of the Commander-in-Chief of an army, the ranking Lieutenant General takes command until a full General relieves him.  In no case can an officer of inferior rank command one of superior rank.  Rank gives command whether ordered or not.  In any case of absence, whether in battle, march, or camp, whenever an officer finds himself Senior in his organization, he is commander and so held without further orders.