114 Norra Carotina Troops, 1861-’65. Seventy-NintH REGIMENT. 115

with military honors. All his assailants were slain on the
spot and houses burned from which they fired. ee
Harris then became Major, and Lieutenant James P. Deaver
became Captain of Company A.

 

This command had several engagements with the enemy
on Laurel in Madison County, on Indian ereek, Red Banks
and other points in Tennessee during the years 1864 and
1865. It was in its last line of battle in the city of Asheville,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lieutenant Morgan and Sergeant Robert Wells, of Com-
pany D, were shot down in cold blood near Asheville by some
of Kirk’s men, pending the armistice agreed upon by Gen-
erals Sherman and Johnston. Lieutenant Hale Smith died
or was killed, near the same date. ao

This command had much good material among the men
and officers, many of whom had been long in active service
in Virginia, or the Army of Tennessee, and had been sent
here to defend their immediate homes against the ravages
and outrages of men who were true to neither side.

The Fourteenth Battalion was kept in that part of North
Carolina near to, and west of the Blue Ridge, with frequent
raids into Kast Tennessee.

The service was a peculiar service and a particularly hard
and dangerous one. Men who had grown fat in General
Lee’s army wasted away to skin and bones amidst the hard-
ships of these mountain campaigns, having no assurance of
safety in the day or night, in camp or on the march, these
mountain gorges serving as cities of refuge for deserters and
bushwhackers. Truly the men of this command needed to
he always on the alert and wide awake.

If time, space and memory would allow, it would be a
great pleasure for me to enroll the names of more than five
hundred of the noble men who served in the ranks of the
Fourteenth (sometimes called the “One Eyed Battalion”
from the fact that Lieutenant-Colonel Henry had lost one
of his eyes) who marched over these mountains through heat
and cold, and fearlessly met and fought foes who forced guer-
rilla war upon them in and around their homes and firesides ;
and foes, too, who had lived in this section and were familiar
with the roads, rivers and locations of houses, and very many
of them deserters from the Confederate army and of the

cause they had sworn to support. In April, 1864, the battal-

ion was at the mouth of Ivy and reported 221 present out of
atotalof510. 59 Off. Rec. Union and Confed. Armies, 865.

_ about four hundred yards to the north of the female college,
about 15 April, 1865.

This battalion was with Colonel Palmer, who commanded
the Western District of North Carolina, at Greenville, Tenn.,
on the day after that brave soldier, General John H. Morgan,
was betrayed and killed in Mrs. Williams’ garden, or vine-
yard; the writer saw the spot, marked by two rude stakes,
placed at his head and feet where he died, and it was shown
me by Mrs. Williams.

In the Fall of 1864, J. E. Rankin was made Adjutant.
He was for many years, since the war, chairman of the

Beard of County Commissioners for Buncombe and is now a
prominent banker of Asheville.

ORGANIZATION OF THE REGIMENT.

In the Spring of 1865 four companies were added as fol-

lows:

Job Barnard, Captain, of Buncombe; Hezekiah E. Bar-
nard, First Lieutenant of Buncombe; Taylor Buckner, Sec-
ond Lieutenant, of Buncombe.

A. I. Posey, Captain, of Henderson; Ben. Brittain, Lieu-
tenant, of Henderson; F. M. Corn, Lieutenant, of Henderson.

William Gilliam, Captain, of Buncombe ; John Step, Lieu-
tenant, of Buncombe.

—. —. Galloway, Captain, of Transylvania; William
Ducker, Lieutenant, of Transylvania; Dick Owens, Lieuten-
ant, of Transylvania.

This made us a full regiment, being the Eighth Cavalry, or
Seventy-ninth North Carolina Regiment. Of this regiment
Lieutenant-Colonel George Tait, of the Fortieth North Car-
clina (Third Artillery) was first appointed Colonel, but not
liking the service for some reason, resigned and Robert L.
Coleman, who had been Captain A. ©. S. in the Sixtieth
North Carolina, and later the Chief Commissary of the De-

partment of Western North Carolina, was made Colonel. He
was a splendid soldier and a most excellent man.