on the left, as well as in our front.  More troops were put in action on both sides, and it seemed as if we were going to have the great battle there.  D.R.  Jones, Longstreet, and McLaws were more or less engaged along their whole lines.  The Third Regiment did not have an opportunity to fire a gun that day, nor either the Seventh, but the other two had a considerable fight, but being mostly behind breastworks their casualties were light.  The enemy withdrew at nightfall, and after remaining on the field for some hours, our army took up the line of march towards Richmond.  It has been computed that McClellan had with him on the Peninsula, outside of his marines, 111,000 men of all arms.

As the term of first enlistment has expired, I will give a brief sketch of some of the field officers who led the regiments during the first twelve months of the war.

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COLONEL JAMES H. WILLIAMS, OF THE THIRD SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEERS.

Colonel James H. Williams, the commander of the Third South Carolina Regiment, was born in Newberry County, October 4th, 1813.  He was of Welsh descent, his ancestors immigrating to this country with Lord Baltimore.  He was English by his maternal grandmother.  The grandfather of Colonel Williams was a Revolutionary soldier, and was killed at the battle of Ninety-Six.  The father of the subject of this sketch was also a soldier, and held the office of Captain in the war of 1812.

Colonel Williams, it would seem, inherited his love for the military service from his ancestors, and in early life joined a company of Nullifiers, in 1831.  He also served in the Florida War.  His ardor in military matters was such he gave little time for other attainments; he had no high school or college education.  When only twenty-four years old he was elected Major of the Thirty-eighth Regiment of State Militia, and in 1843 took the Captaincy of the McDuffie Artillery, a crack volunteer company of Newberry.  In 1846 he organized a company for the Mexican War, and was mustered into service in 1847 as Company L. Palmetto Regiment.  He was in all the battles of that war, and, with the Palmetto Regiment, won distinction on every field.  After his return from Mexico he was elected Brigadier General and then Major General of State Militia.  He served as Mayor of his town, Commissioner in Equity, and in the State Legislature.

Before the breaking out of the Civil War, he had acquired some large estates in the West, and was there attending to some business connected therewith when South Carolina seceded.  The companies that were to compose the Third Regiment elected him their Colonel, but in his absence, when the troops were called into service, they were commanded for the time by Lieutenant Colonel Foster, of Spartanburg.  He joined the Regiment at “Lightwood Knot Springs,” the 1st of May.  He commanded the Third during the term of its first enlistment, and carried it through the first twelve months’ campaign in Virginia.