This regiment, at this time when some Brigades in the Army of Northern Virginia had not more than one thousand or twelve hundred men, came among us with seventeen hundred men ready for duty. The regiment had been stationed at Fort Sumter; had seen nothing of war except the siege of a Fort, and their idea of the chief duty of a soldier was,--to get as much earth between him and the enemy as possible. When they came into line this night, and saw this slight bank of dirt,--about two feet thick, and three feet high,--and learned that we expected, certainly, to fight behind it in the morning, they were perfectly aghast! They pitched in, and began to "throw dirt." They kept it up all night, and by morning had a wall of earth in front of them, in many places eight feet high, and six to seven feet thick. How much higher, and thicker they would have got it, if the enemy had not interrupted them, gracious only knows! Of course they couldn't begin to shoot over it, except at _the sky_; perhaps they thought _anything blue_ would do to shoot at and the sky was blue. But it was a fact, that when the enemy advanced next morning, this big regiment was positively "Hors du Combat." It is true, that when we woke up at daylight, and found what they had done, we jeered, and laughed at them, and showed them the impossibility of fighting from behind that wall, until some of them got ashamed, and began to shovel down the top, a little. Captain McCarthy sent to let General Kershaw know the absurd situation we were in,--supported by infantry that could not fire a shot, and warning him, that if the enemy charged, they would certainly take the line, unless our two guns alone could hold it. General Kershaw sent orders to them "to shovel that thing down to a proper height," but they didn't have time to do it. When the fight began some of them had cut out a shelf on the inside of the bank, and some of them had gotten boxes and logs and a number stood up on them, and did some shooting, and behaved gallantly; but many of them seeming to think that a man should be "rewarded according to his works" laid closely down behind that wall, and never stirred. The next night General Lee took them out of the lines, and gave them picks, and shovels, and made a "sapping and mining corps" of them,--the military service they were most fitted for, and they _were_ rewarded according to their works.