190 NortH Carotina Troops, 1861-65.

Rosert I. Hicks, Surgeon, of Granville County; T. C.
Caldwell, of Mecklenburg County, Assistant Surgeon; later
Dr. Jordan, of Caswell County, killed at South Mountain.

Wri F. Gitz, Sergeant-Major, of Granville County;
killed July 1, 1862 at Malvern Hill.

Cuartes P. Powe x, of Richmond County; appointed
May 10, 1862; promoted to Adjutant May 9, 1864.

On 20 May, the day on which North Carolina seceded
from the Union, the Confederate Capital. had been
removed from Montgomery to Richmond. It was now plain
that the Old Dominion would be the theatre of the war.
Thither the regiment was soon ordered, to return as an or-
ganized body no more, with one brief exception, till the great
drama of blood and ruin had to the last scene been acted.

On Wednesday, 17 July, Colonel Hoke, with seven
companies of the regiment, left the “Camp of Instruction”’ at
Garysburg, N. C., in freight cars for Richmond, Va. Com-
panies C, D and H, were for the time being necessarily left be-
hind on account of the prevalence of measles among the men.
Of this malady and in the person of John H. Harmer, Com-
pany D, the regiment lost its second man, the first man being
Wm. Lowman, of Company A, who died while in camp at
Raleigh.

Four nights were spent in camp at “Rocketts” in the
suburbs of Richmond. It was either here, or just before
leaving Garysburg, that arms and ammunition were first
issued to us. The arms consisted of smooth bore percussion
muskets, with bayonets; the ammunition of paper cartridges,
containing ball and powder. A little later in the war we
were armed with rifles captured from the enemy.

MANASSAS.

Karly on 21 July, a bright, hot Sunday, our seven
companies entrained hurriedly in “box” cars for Manassas
Junction. Enthusiasm was at flood tide in that period of
boundless hope. Cheers greeted us on every side as we
steamed forward and at the stations we were fed and feted.
All knew that a battle was impending and later, by means of
the telegraph line along the railroad, that it was being fought.

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TweEnNtTy-THIRD REGIMENT. 191

We were eager to go forward; more eager, perhaps, than
we were to reach later fields when experience had unmasked
the true, grim visage of war. But many delays occurred.
The running of the train was so erratic that the engineer was
suspected of treason, though apparently without evident
cause. The soldiers who crowded the tops of the cars in their
eagerness to assist, put on brakes too hard. This caused one
of the car trucks to take fire from friction, or come very near
it. As some of the cars carried, or were believed to carry
powder, the men stopped the train by means of the brakes and
cut the endangered car loose till it cooled.

But these delays were inconsiderable, compared with the
long stop near the Rappahannock bridge, above Gordonsville.
We had started full early and could have reached Manassas
by noon, or soon after. The presence of 700 men, fresh on
the field, might have had great weight at more than one junc-
ture of that dubious battle. But we were sidetracked to meet
many trains of wounded, which began to pass us at Louisa
Court House. During Sunday night we pulled into Man-
assas Junction. Monday was a rainy, chilly, dismal day.
The men had stopped their cheering and horse play when the
ears of bloody-bandaged wounded passed them the day before
at Louisa Court House. The night spent on the hard car
floors seemed a real hardship. The twenty-four hours fast—
we had left Richmond too suddenly to prepare rations—
seemed then to border on the heroic. The Manassas water
reddened by contact with the mud, then knee deep around the
station, drank like blood. The rows of untended wounded
who had lain all night on the field in the rain, some of them
horribly mutilated, grew longer and longer as the ambulances
came and went. The pile of amputated limbs, naked and
whitened by the chilling rains, grew higher and higher out-
side an amputating tent hard-by the roadside. It was prob-
ably the most miserable and trying day that the regiment
spent during the war. The time when the Confederate sol-
dier was to become the marching, fighting, fasting machine
that he did, insensible almost to hunger, cold and mental de-
pression, was yet some distance ahead.

We went into camp at Camp Wigfall, one and a quarter