’Twas a bold act then⁠—the English war-ships had just arrived, We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor, And the transports swarming with soldiers.

A few days more and they landed, and then the battle.

Twenty thousand were brought against us, A veteran force furnish’d with good artillery.

I tell not now the whole of the battle, But one brigade early in the forenoon order’d forward to engage the red-coats, Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march’d, And how long and well it stood confronting death.

Who do you think that was marching steadily sternly confronting death? It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong, Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and most of them known personally to the General.