The Middlesex Southerners had come into existence in 1860 subsequent to the John Brown Raid as an elite, co-optive, volunteer cavalry company known as the Middlesex Light Dragoons and for a year its “gay trappings, prancing steeds and jingling sabres” had lent ‘éclat’ to every public gathering within twenty miles, but by the time Redwood joined it, on July 24th 1861, it had changed its name and enlisted in the Confederate Army as infantry. Two months later it was designated Co. C, 55th Va. Infantry. Image 1 shows the uniform of the Middlesex Light Dragoons1.

The company spent the first year of the war garrisoning its home village of Urbanna and doing picket duty along the Rappahannock. It was a quiet time and Redwood recalled it with these two nostalgic illustrations (Images 2 and 3):

The men’s first infantry uniforms were in marked contrast to their splendid cavalry regalia and consisted of ugly frock coats made of off-white kersey ‘nigger cloth’. Their forage caps bore the initials M.S. (Image 4), which they joked stood for ‘Middlesex Southdowns’, ‘More Sheep’ or ‘Mint Slings’.2  When making a sketch of one of his comrades wearing this outfit, Redwood was careful to show him carrying an obsolete .69 calibre musket converted from flintlock to percussion. The artist seems to have had something of a grudge against this weapon and pointedly recalled that it, “weighed in the neighborhood of ten pounds, which had a way of increasing in direct ratio with the miles covered until every screw and bolt seemed to weigh a pound at least.”3  The soldier is standing at the old ‘Shoulder arms’, revealing the 55th Va. was initially trained using Scott’s manual. It would later be retrained using Hardee's.

Although billeted in the local church, the men spent their off duty moments having a riotously good time. They gambled and drank applejack indoors and held stag dances (Image 5) in the yard. A Maryland volunteer passing through Urbanna at the time recalled “my feelings were for the first time shocked by seeing a sacred building in military occupation; and I never saw one abused as was this was.”4  Dismayed, Redwood and a few others “seceded peaceably to an upper room...”.

Months passed in inactivity with winter evenings spent debating the country's ills (Image 6), but real warfare could not be deferred much longer.

Notes

1   This is the only known photo of a soldier in the ante-bellum uniform of the Middlesex Light Dragoons. The uniform facings were most likely yellow, but show up black due to the peculiarities of the collodion process.

2   Scribner's Monthly, Vol.XVII, page 528. A Southdown is a breed of sheep.

3   Miller's Photographic History, Vol. 8, page 140.

4   Recollections of a Maryland Confederate Soldier by McHenry Howard, page 20.