NortH Carouina Troops, 1861-65.

ANOTHER BLOODY VICTORY.

The winter of 1862-63 the regiment spent in camp at Port
Royal, on the Rappahannock, below Fredericksburg, where it
remained until the opening of the campaign in the spring of
1863. When General Hooker crossed the river on 2 May,
1863, and took his position on the line of Chancellorsville,
Early was left with his division and several other brigades to
hold the line below Fredericksburg, while General Jackson
made his celebrated flank movement and gave the enemy bat-
tle at Chancellorsville. During this engagement the enemy’s
extreme left, under General John Gibbon, pressed forward
and occupied the turnpike leading out of Fredericksburg, a
few miles above Marye’s Heights. Here on 4 May the Fifty-
seventh had another rough experience. General Hoke was

_ordered with his command to dislodge a part of the enemy
‘from a strong position on this turnpike. Unlike the posi-
tion at Fredericksburg, the ground in front of the enemy’s
position up to within 100 yards of the turnpike was broken
by defiles, and covered with the stunted post oak that seems
to grow in that part of Virginia where nothing else is planted.
The advance was under the immediate leadership of General
Hoke, and was exceedingly difficult, and anything like true
alignment was out of question, so that when the advancing
line of four regiments reached the level ground near the en-
emy’s line it was necessarily in considerable disorder. Here,
as it reached the open ground, it was greeted with a most ter-
rific fire of musketry and canister from the enemy’s line.
For a moment it looked as if the exploit would result in a
failure, but in that supreme moment there came that same
Confederate yell, so well known to Confederate ears, and
equally well understood by the foe, and in another instant
there was a rush, the enemy’s line was taken and the en-
my driven back with great confusion. The regiment had
maintained its former renown, but it won another bloody
victory. Colonel Godwin, its gallant leader, was wounded,
as was also Adjutant-Lieutenant Semple. Among the com-
pany officers, Captain William C. Lord, of Company A, a gal-
lant and gifted gentleman from Salisbury, was killed, as was

Firry-SeventH REGIMENT. 411

also First Lieutenant John H. Boyd, of Lincolnton, who com-
manded Company G, and Captain William Johnston, of
Company H, of Cabarrus.

THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN.

When the Gettysburg campaign opened, General Early’s
Division led the column into the valley and surprised Gen-
eral Milroy at Winchester. With him went Hoke’s Brigade,
under the command of Colonel Isaac E. Avery, of the Sixth
North Carolina Regiment, that brave and most efficient com-
mander, who within a few weeks was to fall mortally
wounded on the heights of Gettysburg. Milroy’s command
was surrounded by an entrenched camp and consisted of some
1,500 or 2,000 men, and Hoke’s Brigade, the Fifty-seventh,
being still a part of it, was selected to charge one face of the
entrenched camp. The enemy made a poor defence, how-
ever, and were all captured with little or no loss to the Con-
federates, Milroy having in the meantime effected his escape
and left his command to their fate. Then came the momen-
tous. march into Pennsylvania. Early’s Division, with
Hoke’s Brigade, marched by Gettysburg and went to the city
of York. During the march of the division through Penn-
sylvania to this point, within twelve miles of the Susque-
hanna river, the column had encountered no opposition, had
seen no Federal troops, nor even heard the sound of their
drums or bugles. The country through which it had marched
was largely inhabited by Germans, proverbially phlegmatie,
and no sign of excitement had been visible among them. The
Confederate army was restrained by strict orders and there
was little sign of invasion from an hostile army to be seen
along the route of their march. The barns were filled with
grain, the fields were dotted with cattle and horses, and the
Confederate Quartermaster and Commissary in an orderly
way provided the army with sustenance. There was no
straggling and consequently the passing army left only the
tracks of its soldiers and its artillery on the highway; it left
the fences and the houses, too, yet these same men had just
come from the Valley of Virginia, a fenceless and houseless
country, thanks to the presence of the Federal army.