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352 NortH Carotina Troops, 1861-’65.

taking place on the left, Lieutenant-Colonel Lane hurries to
the center. He is met by Colonel Burgwyn, who informs
him “it is all right in the centre and on the left; we have
broken the first line of the enemy,” and the reply comes, “‘we

are in line on the right, Colonel.”

At this time the colors have been cut down ten times, the
color guard all killed or wounded. We have now struck the
second line of the enemy where the fighting is the fiercest and
the killing the deadliest. Suddenly Captain W. W. Me-
Creery, Assistant Inspector General of the Brigade, rushes
forward and speaks to Colonel Burgwyn. He bears him a
message. ‘Tell him,” says General Pettigrew, “his regiment
has covered itself with glory today.” Delivering these en-
couraging words of hig commander, Captain McCreery, who
had always contended that the Twenty-sixth would fight bet-
ter than any regiment in the brigade, seizes the flag, waves it
aloft and advancing to the front, is shot through the heart
and falls, bathing the flag in his life’s blood. Lieutenant
George Wilcox, of Company H, now rushes forward, and pull-
ing the flag from under the dead hero, advances with it. In
a few steps he also falls with two wounds in his body.

The lines hesitates; the crisis is reached; the colors must
advance. Telling Lieutenant-Colonel Lane of the words of
praise from their brigade commander just heard, with orders
to impart it to the men for their encouragement, Colonel Bur-
gwyn seizes the flag from the nerveless grasp of the gallant
Wilcox, and advances, giving the order “Dress on the colors.”
Private Frank Honeyeutt, of Company B, rushes from the
ranks and asks the honor to advance the flag. Turning to
hand the colors to this brave young soldier, Colonel Burgwyn
is hit by a ball on the left side, which, passing through both
lungs, the force of it turns him around and, falling, he is
eaught in the folds of the flag and carries it with him to the
ground. The daring Honeyeut survives his Colonel but a
moment and shot through the head, now- for the thirteenth
time the regimental colors are in the dust.

Kneeling by his side, Lieutenant-Colonel Lane stops for a
moment to ask: ‘My dear Colonel, are you severely hurt ?”
A bowed head and motion to the left side and a pressure of

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TWEnTy-SixtH REGIMENT, 353

the hand is the only response; but “he looked as pleasantly as
if victory was on his brow.” Reluctantly leaving his dying
commander to go where duty calls him, Lieutenant-Colonel
Lane hastens to the right, meets Captain McLauchlin, of
Company K, tells him of General Pettigrew’s words of pihies
but-not of his Colonel’s fall; gives the order “Close your ri
quickly to the left. I am going to give them the bayonet” ;
hurries to the left, he gives a similar order, and returning to
the center finds the colors still down. Colonel Burgwyn and
the brave boy private, Franklin Honeycut, lying by them.
Colonel Lane raises'the colors. Lieutenant Blair, Company
I, rushes out, saying: “No man can take these colors and
live.” Lane replies: “It is my time to take them now”; and
advancing with the flag, shouts at the top of his voice:
Twenty-sixth, follow me.” The men answer with a yell and
press forward. Several lines of the enemy have given away,
but a most formidable line yet remains, which seems deter-
mined to hold its position. Volleys of musketry are fast
thinning out those left and only a skeleton line now remains,
To add to the horrors of the scene, the battle smoke has set-
tled down over the combatants making it almost as dark as
night. With a cheer the men obey the command to advance,
and rush on and upward to the summit of the hill, when
the last line of the enemy gives way and sullenly retires from
the field through the village of Gettysburg to the heights be-
yond the cemetery. 3
Just as the last shots are firing, a sergeant in the Twenty-
fourth Michigan Regiment (now the President of the Tron
Brigade Veteran Association, Mr. Charles H. McConnell, of
Chicago), attracted by the commanding figure of Colonel
Lane carrying the colors, lingers to take a farewell shot, and
resting his musket on a tree, he waits his opportunity. When
about thirty steps distant, as Colonel Lane turns to see if his
regiment is following him, a ball fired by this brave and reso-
lute adversary, strikes him in the back of the neck just below
the brain, which crashes through his jaw and mouth, and for
the fourteenth and last time the colors are down. The red

23