See sources below regarding Lt Tullis and R Hardaway
It would be great to get access to the Hardaway letters.
"He had the honor of holding a lieutenant's commission in the first company accepted by the Confederate government, Hardway's battery, which he joined early in the spring of 1861, and immediately thereafter departed for the seat of war in Virginia, where he received his first baptism of fire in the bloody battle of Bull Run." John W Tullis
Memorial Record of Alabama: A Concise Account of the State's Political, Military, Professional and Industrial Progress, Together With the Personal Memoirs of Many of Its People, Volume 1, by Brant & Fuller
In one letter, dated August 6, 1861, he wrote, “you can not appreciate the great physical and mental labor of watching a battle in full view for eight hours.”
He started out as Captain of his volunteer unit called the “Independent Light Infantry.” Within only a month, the unit was absorbed into the Artillery Battalion which Hardaway then led. The first battle that the unit fought was the Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia. Hardaway quickly achieved distinction for his skilled use of the Whitworth Rifle Cannon.
A Life in Letters: Lt. Col. Robert A. Hardaway in the Civil War and the New South