610 NorrH Carouina Troops, 1861-65. and most unexpectedly, with infantry and artillery to seize the Weldon Railroad. General Barringer barely had time to form his line of the Ninth, Nineteenth and Forty-first Reg- iments in front of the Davis Farm. McGregor’s battery was put in position at the Davis House on the railroad; the Sixty- third, dismounted, supported the battery. To the left and front of the farm lay a body of woods easily reached by Me- Gregor’s guns and through which the enemy would likely pass in their route for the railroad. The whole front line was ordered to fall back rapidly to the rear and narrowest part of the wood, as soon as the action should begin, and there make a stand, out of the line of McGregor’s fire. McGregor was directed not to fire until the enemy reached this wood. The orders were all executed well and had the desired effect. The enemy mistook the movement of our line for a flight. They poured into the woods by thousands. Suddenly Me- Gregor’s guns opened ; for a moment the heavy lines of the en- emy faltered and then fell back under the shock of this splen- did battery, but rallying quickly they again rushed forward when all at once a furious, deadly fire from the dismounted men, at short range, cut them down by scores. The Federal officers dashed bravely forward and called upon their men to follow. But volley after volley thinned their ranks and they broke and fled. They left forty dead on the field there and twenty odd prisoners, including a Lieutenant-Colonel and two Captains. At one time the opposing lines were so close together that prisoners were taken on both sides near each other, and thus Colonel Baker and Lieutenant Fred. Foard, Aide to General Barringer, were captured. Lieutenant Foard made a daring and miraculous escape by jumping from a car window of a fast running train between Washington and Baltimore. They were so sure he was dead that they never slackened speed; and when he soon returned he re- ported that the enemy’s dead and wounded carried off reached several hundred. It was Barlow’s infantry division into which the dismounted Sixty-third fired those awful and deadly volleys. General W. H. F..Lee came to our support just at the close of the action with the other brigade and shortly our in- Stxty-Tuirp ReEGIMEnt. 611 fantry arrived and pursuit was made, but the Federals had effected their escape. WILSON’S RAID.—BLACKS AND WHITES. That name was terribly typical of the mingled, motley mass that Wilson’s invading ‘army with banners” became in its final, frightful fall and rout. The negroes flocked to him by thousands and mingled their black faces with his whites to his utter discomfiture and ruin—as such God-forbidden com- mingling of races always will, and his troopers’ faces were often black and white with fear as the sequel will show. The name of that place now is Blackstone. General Wilson, on page 620, Vol. 80, says that he was “ordered to strike the railroad and destroy it in the direction of Burkville and Roanoke (Staunton) river. High Bridge on the South Side & Roanoke bridge (Staunton river bridge) on the Danville road were especially to be aimed at. Having broken up these roads as far as possible, I was authorized to cross into North Carolina and make my way either to the coast or to General Sherman in North Georgia. If I could not cross the Roanoke (Staunton) river I was left to my own judgment what route to pursue in return: ing to the Army of the Potomac or the James river.” “Fore- seeing,” he says, in substance, that these grand purposes might possibly fail, he “wrote to General Meade the evening before starting that he anticipated no serious difficulty in ex- ecuting his orders,” but that Sheridan must keep Hampton off of him and the Confederate infantry kept so engaged as “to prevent Lee from making detachments.” He was assured “that the Army of the Potomac should cover the Weldon road the next day, the South Side road the day after, and that Hampton having followed Sheridan toward Gordonsville, he need not fear any trouble from him.” How hard it was to teach them, at General Meade’s headquarters, anything about Hampton and that the “rebel cavalry was’ not “‘almost totally annihilated.” Where not otherwise stated the references about Blacks and Whites will be only to pages of Vol. 80, without naming “Vol. 80.”