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Before long Baxter became adept in the slow, laborious routine these muzzle-loading muskets demanded for firing a single round. First, he took the paper cartridge, bit off one corner of the wrapping, poured the charge of black powder down the barrel, and rammed the bullet home with his ramrod. Next, he had to replace this all-important ramrod in its rack under the barrel (the musket was useless without it), pull the hammer back, and stick a percussion cap over its nipple. Now the weapon was ready to fire. (Note, there were many instances, in the excitement of battle, when the ramrod was inadvertently left in the barrel and served as an unusually lethal bullet if the gun itself didn?t blow up.)
Just how much practice shooting the 20th Mississippi did in Lynchburg is debatable. Obviously ammunition was not plentiful enough to waste on targets not wearing the Federal uniform. But Baxter and his fellow soldiers must have fired their muskets to the point where they no longer had to close their eyes with the trigger pull.
Nearly four weeks of training passed in Lynchburg before Special Orders no. 152 was issued by the Adjutant General in Richmond on Friday, September 13, 1861. This order directed Col. Russell to prepare his regiment for movement to Lewisburg in western Virginia. There he was to report to Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd, presently commanding a Confederate force called the Army of the Kanawha.
It took four days for the Adjutant General to find transportation, but on September 17 he telegraphed Col. Russell that railroad cars would be ready for him next day. So on September 18, Private Baxter and the rest of the 20th Mississippi loaded themselves and their baggage onto cars of the Virginia Central Railroad and started the rail trip that would end at Jackson?s River (near Covington) on the west side of the Shenandoah Valley.
It is not likely that these Mississippi soldiers paid any attention to the date on Special Orders No. 152 - Friday, September 13 - or considered it carried overtones of dire events to come. But the Confederate forces in western Virginia that summer and early fall had met with one set back after another,
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