ERA ee an

Sa a ee

Regge

ELT OE ET OT

670 NortH CaroLina Troops, 1861-65.

the ground being so slick after the sleet that it was impossible,
almost, to stand. Men could often be seen marching on the
sleety ground with no shoes on. On the night of 24 March,
1865, Lane’s Brigade moved through Petersburg and took po-
sition to support Gordon in his attack on Hare’s Hill. We
were not engaged, but the position held by the Thirty-seventh
subjected it to a merciless artillery fire for several hours. We
returned to our position and the next day our skirmish line
having been taken General Lane was ordered to re-establish it.
We did so about daylight the next morning, having one officer,
Lieutenant Brown, and several men of the Thirty-seventh
wounded. On 1 April the troops on our right were with-
drawn and sent to Five Forks. To fill the gap made vacant
by their withdrawal the brigade was deployed in skirmish
line ten paces apart behind the works; just as day was break-
ing on 2 April our poor, little weak line, was assaulted by
three lines of battle. After a stubborn resistance, we were
overpowered and our lines taken, the regiment losing five
officers, Captains W. T. Nicholson, Hudson and Petty, Lieu-
tenants Tankersley and Ross. The line was forced back to
Fort Gregg; a part of the Thirty-seventh, with other troops,
undertook to defend the fort. It made a splendid defence,
but after hours of hard fighting it yielded to overwhelming
numbers and all were captured. That night the regiment
fell back with General Lee’s army and surrendered with it
at Appomattox under the command of Major Jackson L. Bost.

Thus closed the career of one of the most gallant regiments
that left the State of North Carolina, or any other State, for
the scene of war. Organized by one of the finest officers of
the State and brought up to that high standard of discipline
necessary in all organized bodies, she maintained it to the
last. Always ready, never murmuring, she covered herself
with glory upon upwards of one hundred bloody battlefields.

When the lines were broken on the morning of 2 April,
the brave senior Captain of the regiment, W. T. Nicholson,
was killed. He had been with the regiment from the begin-
ning and had participated in thirty odd battles. The writer,
who as First Lieutenant, would have succeeded to the Cap-
taincy, was captured. He received a scalp wound, the muzzle

THIRTY-SEVENTH REGIMENT. 671

of the gun being in such close proximity to his head as to blow
powder into his face, nearly destroying his eyes and knocking
him senseless upon the ground. Of course he was captured
and reaching the enemy’s lines, he found many of his friends
there who had been captured at the same time. The wound
proved to be of small consequence and his friends set them-
selves to work picking the powder from his face, which they
succeeded in doing very nicely. The prisoners were then
sent to City Point and from there to Washington. The next
day a train load of officers was started for Johnson’s island,
when near Harrisburg, Pa., in the dead hours of the night,
the writer jumped from the window of the car while it
was running at the rate of forty miles an hour. Why he did
not break his neck, the Lord only knows, but he was not even
hurt, except a few scratches on the forehead where it plowed
in the sand. Fortunately for him, he had on a suit of clothes
made of an old gray shawl, such as the students at Chapel
Hill wore before the war, cutting off the brass buttons from
the coat and vest and substituting wooden pegs, he was in
perfect disguise and passed as a laborer, working a day or so
at once place, then moving farther south, until he reached
Baltimore, thence by steamer to,Richmond, but too late to do
any more fighting for General Lee had surrendered. He pro-
cured a parole and started for his home in Halifax County, N.
C. ; when near Garysburg, in Northampton County, he met a
regiment of negro soldiers who had gone from Norfolk to Wel-
don to put telegraph wires in fix, or rather to escort the tele-
graph men; about a dozen stragglers stopped him and robbed
him of the money he had made in Pennsylvania and Mary-
land; then one concluded to kill him, leveled his gun and
pulled trigger, but one of his companions knocked his gun up
just at that instant, the ball passing over the writer’s head,
again blowing his face full of powder. They then left him
to his fate. This was the last gun the writer ever heard
fired by a Yankee soldier.

I have attempted not to mention the name of any living
person in the body of this sketch. While so many vied with
one another and struggled so hard upon many a bloody field,
it seems unjust to single out one from among so many brave