[2] Garland helped organize a militia company, the Lynchburg Home Guard, after John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.

His militia company joined the 11th Virginia Infantry, and Garland was commissioned by Governor John Letcher as the regiment's colonel.

One particular problem with the Confederate battle plan was that the right wing of the army was delayed by a quarter of an hour waiting for the relieving force.

He used these guns to turn back fresh Yankee soldiers that hoped to retake lost positions and thus won the battle.

In the Battle of Gaines' Mill, Garland successfully attacked the Federal flank and took many prisoners earning an outstanding reputation in the Confederate army.

[2] In the beginning of Maryland Campaign General Robert E. Lee separated the Army of Northern Virginia into two corps and gave them different tactical tasks.

Garland's brigade was a part of Maj. Gen. Daniel H. Hill's division in the Second Corps, and had a secondary objective to defend "Stonewall" Jackson's rear echelons.

Garland commanded five North Carolina volunteer regiments, the 5th, the 12th, the 13th, the 20th and the 23rd, which were positioned in the South Mountain range guarding the passes.

[13] McClellan expected to meet with strong opposition at the South Mountain, but in reality the Confederates there were greatly outnumbered by the Federals.

Hill wrote in his memoir, The Battle of South Mountain, or Boonsboro: Fighting For Time at Turner's and Fox's Gaps, that after the Federal artillery started firing at 9 a. m. he instructed Garland to defend the National Pike, which was leading through the Turner's Gap towards Boonsboro, at all costs: The firing had aroused that prompt and gallant soldier, General Garland, and his men were under arms when I reached the pike.

I explained the situation briefly to him, directed him to sweep through the woods, reach the road, and hold it at all hazards, as the safety of Lee's large train depended upon its being held.

Had he lived, his talents, pluck, energy, and purity of character must have put him in the front rank of his profession, whether in civil or military life.

[13] About 3,000 Federals belonging to General Jacob D. Cox's division from Gen. Jesse L. Reno corps, including Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes of the 23d Ohio regiment, attacked Garland's men whose number was at "scarce a thousand.

[14][15] During the spirited mid-morning engagement at Fox's Gap, Garland was mortally wounded while commanding his men who were defending a stone wall bordering farmer Daniel Wise's field along Old Sharpsburg Road.

On September 11, 1993, members of Garland-Rhodes Camp 409, Sons of Confederate Veterans, installed a commemorative marker near the spot of Garland's death on Wise's Field near the earlier 1889 marker erected by Union soldiers of the IX Corps to Gen Jesse L. Reno on Reno Monument Road.

Nearby a bronze sculpture with a granite base monument dedicated to the North Carolina troops that held the line there was erected in 2005.