158 Nortro Carorina Troops, 1861-65.

ing Fort Steadman, together with a large number of prison-
ers. The main body of our army followed and took posses-
sion of the works and then lay down and waited until the
enemy could reinforce their lines, and still waited until they
came upon us in front and by flank in numbers so great that
they could not be counted, then we were ordered to fall back
to our own lines, which we did through such a storm of shot
and shell as I never dreamed of before. How any man es-
eaped death I have never been able to see. I remember
starting on the perilous run never expecting to reach our
lines, and the terrible thought would come to me, “I am to be
shot in the back.” I have always been able to find some
sort of excuse for failures, but in this instance I stand to-day
as I did on that day, and unhesitatingly say, “Somebody
blundered.”

The last battle I shall mention was that of Five Forks, the
loss of which caused the fall of Petersburg and practically
ended the war. After the disastrous struggle on 25 March
the Forty-ninth Regiment marched through Petersburg for
the last time in a drenching rain, and lay at Battery No. 45
all night ; then we were moved daily from place to place until
the morning of the 31st we moved in the direction of Dinwid-
die Court House, and after marching and counter-marching,
we finally lay down on our arms near the enemy, and waited
for daylight, fully expecting to be ordered into battle every
minute. We were doomed to disappointment, however, for
early in the morning of the first day of April we were ordered
to Five Forks, with the enemy following close in our rear.
Reaching Five Forks, we quietly threw up a line of breast-
works, and the enemy came thundering on in front, then in
the rear, the men of the Forty-ninth blazing away with the
same calm deliberation that had characterized them on scores
of battlefields before, but it was no use. The Yankees sim-
ply run over us and crowded us so that it became impossible
to shoot. They literally swarmed on all sides of us, and by
and by, as I looked toward the center of the regiment, I saw
our old tattered banner slowly sinking out of sight. ck few
men escaped by starting early, but most of the true and
tried men of this gallant old regiment were prisoners of

Forty-NintH REGIMENT. 159

war and in a little while were on their way to Point Lookout,
or Johnson’s Island.

It is unjust to all the other regiments of the North Caro-
lina troops to claim for any one regiment any special bravery
or devotion to the Lost Cause. There was not a regiment,
so far as my information goes, that did not meet all require-
ments of the service and fill the measure of its responsibility
to the South. But while I do not claim any special honor
for any one body of soldiers from North Carolina, I do
claim this for my State as against other Southern States.

With a population in 1860 of 629,942, and 115,000 vot-
ers, North Carolina sent 127,000 soldiers to the Confederate
armies. She furnished 51,000 stands of arms, horses for
seven regiments of cavalry, artillery equipments for bat-
teries, ete. North Carolina expended, out of her own funds,
$26,663,000 and never applied for a dollar of support from
the Confederate Government. She lost 37 Colonels of regi-
ments killed in action, or died of wounds. She had six
Major-Generals in service, and three of them, namely: Pen-
der, Ramseur and Whiting, were killed in battle. There
were 25 Brigadier-Generals from this State, four of whom
were killed, and all the others were wounded. The first vic-
tory was won by North Carolinians at Bethel, 10 June, 1861,
and they fired the last volley at Appomattox.

In the seven days’ fight around Richmond in 1862, there
were 92 Confederate regiments engaged, and 46 of them
were ftom North Carolina—just one-half—and more than
one-half of the killed and wounded were from this State. At
Chancellorsville in May, 1863, there were forty North Caro-
lina regiments, and of the killed and wounded over one-half
were from this State.

At Gettysburg 2,592 Confederates were killed, and 12,707
wounded. Of the killed 770 were North Carolinians, 435
Georgians, 399 Virginians, 2,588 Mississippians, 217 South
Carolinians, and 204 Alabamians. The Northern army lost
in this great battle 3,155 killed and 14,529 wounded. North
Carolina lost during the war 41,000 men who were killed in
battle or died in the service, 14,000 of the above number were

 

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A LRT CNET ECR EN ar NNR