sleep, while others sat around the good, warm, crackling blaze, wondering what next.  Scarcely had we all became quiet than orders came to “fall in.”  Back over the same sloppy, muddy, and deep-rutted road we marched, retracing the steps made only an hour before, reaching our old camp at daylight, but we were not allowed to stop or rest.  The retreat had begun.  Magruder, with the other of his forces, was far on the road towards Williamsburg, and we had to fall in his rear and follow his footsteps over roads, now simply impassable to any but foot soldiers.  We kept up the march until we had left Yorktown ten miles in our rear, after marching a distance of nearly thirty miles, and all night and day.  A council of war had been held at Richmond, at which were present President Davis, Generals Lee, Smith, Longstreet, Johnston, and the Secretary of War, to determine upon the point at which our forces were to concentrate and give McClellan battle.  Johnston favored Richmond as the most easy of concentration; thereto gather all the forces available in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina around Richmond, and as the enemy approached fall upon and crush him.  G.W.  Smith coincided with Johnston.  Longstreet favored reinforcing Jackson in the Valley, drive the enemy out, cross the Potomac, and threaten Washington, and force McClellan to look after his Capitol.  The others favored Yorktown and the Peninsula as the point of concentration.  But General Johnston found his position untenable, as the enemy could easily flank his right and left with his fleet.

On May 3rd began the long, toilsome march up the York River and the James.  The enemy hovered on our rear and picked up our stragglers, and forced the rear guard at every step.  At Williamsburg, the evening of the 4th of May, Johnston was forced to turn and fight.  Breastworks and redoubts had been built some miles in front of the town, and it was here intended to give battle.  The heavy down-pour of rain prevented Anderson, who was holding the rear and protecting the wagon trains, from moving, and the enemy began pressing him hard.

Kershaw and the other brigades had passed through Williamsburg when the fight began, but the continual roar of the cannon told of a battle in earnest going on in the rear and our troops hotly engaged.  Kershaw and Simms, of our Division, were ordered back at double quick.  As we passed through the town the citizens were greatly excited, the piazzas and balconies being filled with ladies and old men, who urged the men on with all the power and eloquence at their command.  The woods had been felled for some distance in front of the earthworks and forts, and as we neared the former we could see the enemy’s skirmishers pushing out of the woods in the clearing.  The Second and Eighth South Carolina Regiments were ordered to occupy the forts and breastworks beyond Fort Magruder, and they had a perfect race to reach them before the enemy did.  The battle was raging in all fierceness