316 NortH Carotina Troops, 1861-65.

cline this post of duty. Send me the manuscript if possible
by 1 March, next.

I respectfully request that you write the history of the
North Carolina Battalion in which you served in the war.

Please acknowledge your acceptance of this assignment to
duty, the last which the Confederate soldiers can ask of you,
that I may enter your name on the list to be filed with the
Veterans’ Association. Believe me to be, with highest re-

rard and esteem Fraternally yours
? ?
W ALTER CLaRK.

The above courteous request of Comrade Walter Clark to
prepare this sketch would be equivalent to an order from
headquarters that must be obeyed. Moore in his “Roster”
of North Carolina troops, who served in the armies of the
Confederacy, calls this the Eighth Battalion, (IV, 359) and
gave our number to the battalion of men detailed as artisans
(395) ; how the error occurred in the War Department Rec-
ords, he does not explain. But from the foundation of the
battalion, in May, 1865, it was always known and mustered
as the “Tenth Battalion of North Carolina Artillery.”

The engineer officers of the Confederate Army were prob-
ably as fine a body of experts as ever existed; whenever they
projected lines of defence around any important point we
might rest assured that these had been planned and completed
according to the most approved system. At the entrances
of the Cape Fear river and also around the City of Wilming-
ton, every point was made as impregnable as possible. When
these entrenchments were finished several artillery regiments
were formed for the special garrison of the same; as Presi-
dent Davis remarked, he had sent his most skillful officers to
the defence of the place—referring then more especially to
that knightly soldier, General W. H. C. Whiting, who died
21 January, 1865, from wounds received at the second attack
upon Fort Fisher.

To this necessity of creating a force for the defence of
Wilmington does the Tenth Battalion owe its formation. In
February, 1862, we find the first enlistments were made for
the battalion, and on 13 May of that year, the Major (Wil-

Trento BATTALION. 317

ton L. Young, of Wake County), was commissioned to com-
mand the three companies then comprising the organization.
Subsequently, in April, 1863, Company D was formed and
Woodbury Wheeler made its Captain. Captain Wheeler had
served during the first six months of the war as Adjutant of
the Sixteenth Regiment, under General Robert E. Lee, in the
campaign around Cheat Mountain, Virginia. The men were
nearly all from the Western counties of our State. The
duties of this battalion at that time were important, but not
brilliant; in the summer season they were ordered out of the
city either to the forts at the mouth of the Cape Fear or to
the “Sound,” to prevent any inroads from that direction.

A DARING DEED.

It was whilst the battalion was stationed at Fort Caswell
that a raid was made by the enemy, from their fleet to the
headquarters of our General at Smithville, which for daring
could hardly be surpassed. Following the channel, which
was necessarily left open to admit our English friends, in
their blockade-running steamers, these raiders, commanded
by the same Lieutenant Wm. B. Cushing, who afterwards
destroyed the ironclad “Albemarle,” with equal intrepidity,
came within pistol shot of our sentries; passed batteries that
could have hurled tons of shot and shell upon them, and land-
ing at the Smithville wharf, went immediately to General
Hebert’s quarters. He fortunately was at Wilmington on that
night; but when his chief of staff raised the window to find
out the cause of the commotion on the porch, the front end of
a revolver was thrust in his face with a demand for his sur-
render. The result of this raid was the capture of that
officer only. The alarm was promptly given, all the batteries
opened fire on the channel-way—dark as Erebus although it
was. Cushing fled to his gunboat, lying in as near ‘as she
could to the fort, and then putting on a full head of steam,
turned his vessel seaward. In his great haste he ran into
another gunboat, the “Peterhoff,” and she sank in less than
ten minutes.

The next day one of the fleet came in near the fort again,
but its white flag at the peak was not observed. Our Whit-

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