652 Norru Caroxina Troops, 1861-65.

idly walking up and down his squadron, with his pistol in
his hand and saying something in a very commanding tone,
that he ought not to have said: “Give ’em hell, boys; give
’em hell.” He then gave his squadron another command
and in a moment the fifth squadron and the other four, all in
a straight line, with grand old Captain John R. Erwin at
their head were majestically marching “by twos” off their last
battlefield, some men firing to their left as they retired. As
I rode to the regiment’s head Captain Erwin, my beloved
old company commander, said: ‘Paul, where are my led
horses?” I said: ‘They are down this road here.” He
said: “They have been sent for, but you get them to me
as quick as you can.” General Barringer, Foard, Churchill
and Brown veered off to the left with our regiment and I
never got back to them out of the mass of maddened, moving
men down that road. Our led horses were taken out safely
through that lane; but no man or horse that ever got into it
could return. There was a compact, irresistible movement,
like a glacier’s, only one way. And, besides, to the right of
the lane, as we moved, in full, plain view, and not far off came
that great flanking column we had seen go to our left as the
battle was on. It was the only stampede of Southern soldiers
I had ever seen. And it was “the last.”

“At the end of the lane, by which the First and Second
Regiments with the wounded men and led horses of the Fifth
escaped a gallant effort was made to rally the fleeing men and
fight the victorious, pursuing cavalry of Custer. This effort
was simply an act of desperation and, as was announced, to
‘aid the escape of General Barringer and the dismounted men
of the Fifth.’ The brave men who had fought through the
war recognized it as such, and only a few heroic spirits, prin-
crpally, almost solely from the mounted men of the Fifth
Regiment, heeded the efforts to rally. These formed, faced
about and poured their last shots of the war into the head
of the column of the pursuing hosts.” This I copy from my
“Sketches” of 1881.

Just after I started for those led horses, General W. H. F.
Lee rode up. How on earth he got there past that left flank-
ing column I have never been able to conceive. He asked

Srxty-Turrp Reqiment. 653

me: “Where is General Barringer?’ I answered: “He
has just gone right in there,” pointing. Close to us was Me-
Gregor with his last gun, which he had run across the lane on
the side next to that left flanking column, pouring his last
shots into that column and “raving like a mad man.” All
of the Sixty-third who passed out that lane went, that day, to
Burkeville and Clover Station. I was shot twice at Namozine
Church, last time severely, as I went for the led horses and,
with other wounded, was sent to hospital at Danville and fur-
loughed for thirty days, which has mercifully been extended
to more than thirty years.

General Barringer and Foard and Brown were captured
that same day and thus ended Courier Frank Brown’s bril-
liant career as a private soldier of Company H, Sixty-third
North Carolina. There never was a braver boy in battle.
He had five personal hand-to-hand conflicts after that one at
Goodall’s Tavern and in each came out hero and victor, as
there. I have said much of him because the truth entitled him
to it, but also to present him as a fair representative of the
men of the Sixty-third North Carolina. There were hundreds
of men in the regiment just like Frank Brown. Nobody knew
that better than Brown and that aided him to do his own glo-
rious deeds. As to what the ranks from which he came would
do in a furious fight around him, he never had any concern
to mar the supremacy of his own great soul and courage in
battle and this thought immensely aided the glorious grandeur
of his own courage and career. As it always does. Vol. 95,
pp. 1119, 1131, 1139, and 1301. On which last page Gen-
eral Fitzhugh Lee speaks of our brigade as “that very excel-
lent North Carolina brigade.”

The Sixty-third made its way out and escaped under the
guidance of Captain Erwin, without the loss of a man after
marching off the fatal field of Namozine. Captain Pearson
Says: ‘‘We got into a large body of timber which shielded
us. By walking all day, all night and all the next day, almost
without stopping, we got out, but never rejoined the army.”
The above narration will explain why Barringer’s Brigade
had only twenty-three officers and men in the surrender at
Appomattox.