206 NortH Carotina Troops, 1861-’65.

reorganization he refused promotion, saying that he wished
nothing unless won on the battle field. Major E. J. Chris-
tian was mortally wounded, dying a few days later.

MAJOR EDMUND J. CHRISTIAN.

Major Edmund J. Christian was born in Montgomery
County, N. C., in 1834. His uncle, Samuel H. Christian,
was elected to the Confederate Congress, but died
before taking his seat. While a boy, his father died, leaving
his mother and her other children largely dependent on him,
which duty he successfully performed. Major Christian was
a farmer by vocation. He was a man of magnificent physique
and had no bad habits. On the outbreak of war he enlisted
as a private, but was elected Lieutenant, in the Montgomery

Vounteers No. 1, which became Company C on the organiza- °

tion of the regiment. Upon the reorganization, 10 May,
1862, he was elected Major, to fall in battle just three weeks
later. At Seven Pines he had received two wounds, either of
which would have justified his retirement from the field. But
he pluckily went forward at the head of his men till stricken
down with the third and mortal wound. He was conveyed to
a private house in Richmond, tenderly nursed for the two or
three days he had to live, and was laid to rest in the Confed-
erate Capital which he had died to defend. Lieutenant W.
P. Gill, of Company G, was also wounded.

Captain C. C. Blacknall, Company G, was promoted to
Major on the death of Major Christian.

The courage and dash of the men and officers in this
bloody onslaught, has never been surpassed. When in the
impetuosity of the onset through the vine-tangled swamp, the
three right companies became temporarily separated from
the regiment. Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston led them gal-
lantly forward with the Fourth Regiment. Splendidly did
the whole command show its alacrity to meet and close with
the foe, no matter what the obstacles, so that they knew
where he was and there was no confusion of orders
as in the woods at Williamsburg. The conduct of private
Wm. C. Cole, brother of Captain A. T. Cole, at Seven Pines,

TWENTY-THIRD REGIMENT. 207

is a good illustration of the high resolve of the men to do their
full duty. This youth, a mere stripling and in poor health
from the hardships of the campaign, found in the thick of
the fight, that the channel of the tube was obstructed, and
that his musket would not fire, sat down under a hot fire, re-
moved the tube with his wrench, screwed home a new one,
caught up with the line at a few bounds and continued to
load and fire as long as a Yankee was in sight.

After Seven Pines, the regiment went into camp near
Richmond and passed several weeks in drilling. Here on
Tuesday, 17 June, it was re-brigaded, being now placed
in brigade with the Fifth, Twelfth, Thirteenth and Twenti-
eth, all North Carolina regiments. Samuel Garland, Jr., of
Lynchburg, Va., remained in command as Brigadier. Soon
after the wounding of General Joseph E. Johnston at Seven
Pines, General R. E. Lee became Commander-in-Chief of the

army.

THE SEVEN DAYS’ FIGHTING.

As the month of June, 1862, wore away, McClellan’s plans
developed. The Confederate Capital was to be taken by reg-
ular approaches. The 26 June found his splendidly

organized and equipped army of at least 105,000 ef-
fectives, strongly intrenched on a line straddling the Chick-
ahominy and extending from White Oak Swamp, twelve
miles southeast of Richmond, to Mechanicsville, six miles
northeast. The line, especially that part north of the Chick-
ahominy, ran along positions of great natural strength, rugged
bluffs protected largely by streams or swamps on the side next
to the Confederates.

The southern strategy of this protracted death grapple, so
well described by its name, the Seven Days Fighting, was
masterly—as brilliant as history records. The valor and
; the Southern soldiers in that pro-
longed combat is scarcely matched in the annals of time. But
for an apparently inherent defect in the Southern mind—its
inability to master, or its universal contempt for, the practi-
eal details of things, the invading hosts would in all likeli-

staying powers evinced by