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As Andrew observes, throughout May the company requested to be brought into service. Virginia's Governor John Letcher finally called the Liberty Hall Volunteers to action on June 2, 1861 and ordered them to proceed to Harper's Ferry, where the Valley forces were mobilizing.

When the Liberty Hall Volunteers company was formed in April of 1861, Professor Alexander Nelson assumed the role of captain, but he was forced to resign in June because he contracted erysipelas (Bean 7, 9, 11). James White, a professor of Greek at Washington College, was commissioned as a Captain when Company I was organized on June 2, 1861. Because he was thirty-two at the time that he became a captain, White was nicknamed "Old Zeus." He resigned on September 6, 1861 due to illness (see Turner).

Andrew Brooks may be referring to the fighting that broke out near Hampton Roads, Virginia on May 18, 1861 (Denney, 44). Harper's Ferry was a crucial site during the Civil War, not only because it was formerly a Federal arsenel, but because it was "the northern gateway to the Valley of Virginia" (Robertson, The Stonewall Brigade, 4). On April 18, 1861, even before Virginia seceded from the union, Virginia militia members took control of Harper's Ferry in order to win possession of the arsenel. Andrew's speculations demonstrate how rumors were swirling in the early days of the war.

Classes at Washington College were suspended on June 1 (Turner, 39).