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298 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River

twenty years old, and many of his men were not much older.
The company was attached to the Third Regiment, one of the
ten organized as State Troops and enlisted for the war. They
were ordered to Richmond in June, and, arriving just after the
Battle of Seven Pines, Mechanicsville was their first engage-
ment. They took part in the Seven Days’ Battle, and on J uly 1,
at Malvern Hill, Captain Parsley was severely wounded through
the neck by a minie ball; but, after a three-months’ furlough,
he returned to his command and was in every battle up to
Sharpsburg, September 17, 1862.

Before that time he had by regular gradation reached the
rank of major, and, subsequently, on the resignation of Colonel
DeRosset and the promotion of Lieutenant Colonel Thurston,
he became lieutenant colonel. In the campaign of 1863, known
as the Pennsylvania Campaign, Colonel Parsley had command
of the regiment. He led it in the charge at Culp’s Hill on the
3d of July, when, with the Maryland Battalion, they took pos-
session of the enemy’s works. The Third was greatly reduced
by severe fighting at Chancellorsville and had had no chance to
recruit its ranks since. This proud regiment that went into the
field over a thousand strong in the Seven Days’ Battle was, after
Gettysburg, so much reduced that the major at the head of the
column and the assistant surgeon, at the foot, could carry on a
conversation without effort. Every officer of Major Parsley’s
old company, the Cape Fear Riflemen, was killed.

One of the original members of this old company, writing in
1898 of Colonel Parsley, says, ‘As brave as the bravest, kind
and considerate towards inferiors in rank, he was at all times
thoughtful and careful of his men in every way. I believe all
loved him. I know I loved him, for he was my good friend.”
Another comrade says: “The major himself, only twenty-two or
twenty-three years old, had been in every engagement from the
Seven Days’ Battle to Gettysburg. His training had been
under the eye of Col. Gaston Meares, and, as promotion fol-
lowed promotion, Colonel Parsley was always a disciplinarian
of the progressive type. On occasion he could be a boy and
enter a wrestling match in camp with all the zest of a schoolboy,
but woe to the officer who presumed upon this to take official
liberties.”

Between Gettysburg and Chancellorsville he received two
slight wounds, one being a narrow escape from death by the

glancing of a ball on the button of his coat. At Spottsylvania,

The War Between the States 299

May 12, 1864, Colonel Thurston being absent, wounded, Lieu-
tenant Colonel Parsley led the regiment, and with the greater
part of it, after a desperate hand to hand fight at the “Horse-
shoe,” or “Bloody Angle,” he was captured and confined at Fort
Delaware. From there, with fifty other officers, he was trans-
ferred to Charleston Harbor on the prison ship Dragon and
anchored in the line of fire from Charleston, “‘in retaliation” for
the quartering of some Federal officers, prisoners, in the city of
Charleston as a protection to the city, full of non-combatants,
against the Federal firing from the “Swamp Angel Battery.”
The prisoners on the Dragon were kept between decks, over-
crowded, near a stove where all the cooking for the whole ship
was done. Ventilation was bad, and the suffering from the heat —
almost unbearable. They were supplied scantily with the coars-
est of food and subjected to all kinds of indignities. From here
they were exchanged on the 3d of August. Colonel Parsley
returned to the army not long afterwards, taking with him a
number of recruits for his regiment. He shared the fortunes of
the Third till April, 1865. Just three days before Lee’s sur-
render, in the engagement at Sailor’s Creek during the retreat
to Appomattox, when only twenty-four years old, he met his
death by a minie ball fired by a sharpshooter, falling with his

face to the foe.

Capt. W. T. Ennet, originally of Onslow County, was pro-
moted to be major after the resignation of Colonel DeRosset,
and always after that commanded the regiment in the absence of
Colonel Parsley. He was unfortunately captured at Spottsyl-
vania and sent to Fort Delaware, and was among those taken to
Charleston Harbor on the prison ship Dragon, suffering the
hardships of imprisonment with the rest. Major Ennet was by
profession a physician and highly accomplished. He was also
a brave soldier and a warm friend.

Col. Robert H. Cowan was first chosen lieutenant colonel of
the Third Regiment, but in the spring of 1862 was elected
colonel of the eighteenth. The Third Regiment parted with
sincere regret from Colonel Cowan. The whole command, both
rank and file, loved him and recognized him as one of those by
whom the regiment had been brought to its fine efficiency. The
esteem in which he was held was manifested on his departure