General Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations During the Civil War

[78] ground between Union Mills and the village of Centreville — the former on the right; G. W. Smith's formed on the left, thrown back on the heights nearly parallel to and north of the Warrenton Turnpike; and Jackson's, constituting the reserve, was posted in rear of Centreville. The engineers were directed to fortify the summit of the hill near this village — that, by holding it, the strongest and salient point of the position, with two or three thousand men, the army itself might be free to manoeuvre. As we had not artillery enough for their works and for the army fighting elsewhere, at the same time, rough wooden imitations of guns were made, and kept near the embrasures, in readiness for exhibition in them. To conceal the absence of carriages, the embrasures were covered with sheds made of bushes. These were the quaker guns afterward noticed in Northern papers.

The President's visit to the army seems to have suggested to him its reorganization in such a manner, as far as practicable, as to put the regiments of each State into the same brigades and divisions. The organization then existing had been made by General Beauregard and myself, necessarily without reference to States. The four or five regiments arriving first formed the first brigade, the next four or five the second, and so on. As the regiments united in this manner soon became attached to each other and to their commanders, it had been thought impolitic, generally, to disturb this arrangement. Soon after the President's return to Richmond, orders were issued directing me to organize the troops anew, so that each brigade should be formed of regiments belonging