While Gen. McLaws was writing his wife at home in Georgia, portions of his division were rounding up part of a pack of Confederate deserters who had formed a camp they had named Texas.

That August 12, a Wednesday, Spartan Band diarist William H. Hill wrote only that the weather was “clear and very warm.”

But Hill was a quartermaster clerk. Diarist Robert A. Moore of the 17th regiment was a newly commissioned lieutenant who would soon command a company and he was more interested in the doings of the riflemen.

Hence, Moore noted when:

“A detachment of our brigade has just come in with 16 deserters which they captured about 8 miles from camp in a settlement called Texas.

“There were more than seventy there,” Moore recorded, “but all escaped except 16.”