a IOS a a A Nm NRT er 0 Tae eee 598 NortH CaroLtina Troops, 1861-65. cadet at West Point. This gentleman resigned in July 1862, and was succeeded by Lieutenant Walter Clark. Adjutant Walter Clark, since so favorably and well known as a learned lawyer, accomplished jurist, publicist, editor and author, was a cadet at Colonel Tew’s Military Academy at Hillsboro when the war broke out. Leaving fhe academy in June, 1861, at the age of 14 he joined the Twenty-second reg- iment, J. J. Pettigrew, Colonel, as drill master, accompanied the regiment to Virginia, and was stationed at Evansport, on the Acquia Creek. In November of the same year he is again drill master at Camp Mangum and acting as Adjutant of the Thirty-fifth Regiment just then being organized. When the regiment was ordered to New Bern he returned to Colonel Tew’s academy, and 1 August, 1862, was appointed by Colonel Ransom Adjutant of his regiment, and joined the command as it was entering upon the Maryland campaign of 1862. Was with the regiment in that campaign and at Fredericksburg acting with gallantry and efficiency in the battles of Sharps- burg and Fredericksburg. On the return of the brigade to North Carolina in February, 1863, he resigned and went to Chapel Hill, where he graduated 2 June, 1864. Was elected Major of a battalion of five companies of Junior Re serves the day after his graduation and 3 July 1864, was elected Lieutenant-Colonel of the Seventieth North Carolina Regiment, probably the youngest officer of that rank in either army, being then 17 years of age. In May, 1862, Captain Hugh M. Dixon, of Company H, resigned and First Lieutenant David G. Maxwell was pro- moted to be Captain and Silas C. Hunter and J. R. Baker made First and Second Lieutenants respectively of the com- pany. SEVEN PINES AND MALVERN HILL. Until ordered to join General Jos. E. Johnston’s army de- fending Richmond, Ransom’s brigade remained in and around Kinston, N. C., perfecting its drill and discipline and defending our lines in eastern North Carolina. It will not Tuirty-FirrH REGIMENT. 599 be considered out of place here to refer to our brigade com- mander, General Robert Ransom, Jr. This distinguished soldier from the Old North State was born at the home of his ancestors in Warren county. He chose the military as his profession, and was educated at West Point. Selecting the cavalry as his arm of the service, he had risen to be a Captain in the Seeond Dragoons when the war broke out. At once resigning from the United States army on the se- cession of North Carolina, he determined to flash his sword in defense of his native State, and offered his services to Gov- ernor Ellis; was appointed Colonel of the First Cavalry, which became under his management one of the best drilled, most efficient and the finest looking cavalry regiment in the army of Northern Virginia. I+ never lost under its several successive commanders this proud distinction. Appointed Brigadier General, he was sent at once to Kin- ston, after the fall of New Bern, to help reorganize the troops in camp there, and was put in command of a brigade, ever afterward to bear his name. Applying the same administra- tive ability and rigid discipline to his infantry brigade that he had exercised towards his cavalry regiment, the brigade rapidly became welded into a well drilled and disciplined command, ready and eager to see more active service in the great theatre of war then raging around the capital of the Confederacy. This wish of the commander and of his brig- ade was soon to be gratified, and in June, 1862, Brigadier- General Robert Ransom, Jr., with his brigade, was ordered to Virginia and assigned to Huger’s Division. The brigade as now organized, was composed of the Twenty-fourth, Twenty- fifth, Twenty-sixth, Thirty-fifth and Forty-ninth North Car- olina Regiments. From 25 to 28 June the brigade was involved in some sharp minor engagements with General Philip Kearney’s division on the Williamsburg road in the neighborhood of King’s School House on the scene of the battle of Seven Pines. It was part of Magruder’s command, though it belonged regu- larly to Huger’s division, which assaulted Malvern Hill at the close of the day, 1 July, 1862.