348 NortH Carotina Troops, 1861-65.

Orderly Sergeant J. H. Myrover to the position of Second
Lieutenant. Mr. Fuller quit the service and the field te
enter upon that public career which his matchless abilities
rendered a succession of brilliant triumphs nearly up to the
close of his life a few days ago, as judge of the Court of
Claims. He was a good private soldier and a still better of-
ficer. He loved danger for danger’s sake; he was the friend
and confidant of his men, while he enforced discipline; and,
though the soldiers crowded about the ballot box to vote his
political preferment eagerly, they bade him farewell from
the mess table and the tent with sorrow.

The company bore an honorable and conspicuous part in
the several engagements around Kinston, up to the final aban-
donment of that position by our forces. In the second fight
at that place, where the battery held the left of the line, and
aided in successfully repelling repeated charges of the enemy,
two Parrott guns had been placed in the hands of the com-
pany, which so badly crushed the shells that many of our own
men, in their advance upon the enemy, were wounded by the
broken pieces of the flying missiles. In this battle the Napo-
leon field piece served by Sergeant Hall and his detachment
wrought fearful execution on thesenemy, as was admitted in
their subsequent reports.

For some time in the summer of 1863 the battery was sta-
tioned at Fort Hamilton, in Martin County. It will thus
be seen that its field of duty extended from Goldsboro east-
ward of the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad, and embraced
a large area of territory. In truth, though the sorely pressed
Confederate government could spare but a handful of men
for Eastern North Carolina, its retention was of prime im-
portance to us, for it was one of the granaries whence were
drawn the supplies for the Southern armies. Quartermas-
ters J. B. Smith, John McRae and Charles R. Arey pene-
trated away into Hyde and other extreme eastern counties
with their wagons, bringing away great quantities of corn and
forage, and on every expedition they were imminently ex-
posed to incursions of the enemy as well as to the treachery of
the ““Buffaloes.”” On 27 November the battery reported 137
present, 49 Off. Rec. Union and Oonfed. Armies, 851.

THIRTEENTH BATTALION. 349

On 1 December, 1863, Captain Joseph B. Starr was pro-
moted to the Lieutenant-Coloneley of the Thirteenth Bat-
talion, North Carolina Troops (Light Artillery), and the

.command of the company devolved on Lieutenant Benj. Rush

as the senior commissioned officer. The affection of the men
led them to feel no little gratification at the well-merited
honor tendered to Captain Starr, but this feeling filled their
hearts, also, with genuine grief at his departure as their com-
manding officer. Generous in heart, devoted to the welfare
of those who had so long served with him, concealing under
an occasionally brusque manner warm sympathies, endowed
with unflinching courage and inflexible firmness, his soldiers
trusted him implicitly and loved him cordially.

The vacancy on the commissioned staff of the battery was
filled by the election of Sergeant J. D. McLean to the Second
Lieutenancy, a gallant soldier of irreproachable standing
among his comrades, ever faithful to his duties both in the
camp and on the field.

At Greenville, in the winter of 1863, Colonel Roger Moore,
commanding the post with a small force of cavalry and Starr’s
Battery, was informed that the enemy, consisting of a squad-
ron of cavalry, had made a‘ reconnoissance from Washington.
At 7 o’clock at night 30 December, he sent one company of
cavalry and a piece of artillery from Starr’s Battery, under
command of Lieutenant Myrover, down the Washington road
to find the enemy—which they did, marching into a cleverly
planned ambuscade where the road led through a swamp, and
was fringed by dense undergrowth. The surprise was com-
plete, a heavy volley from the cavalry carbines of the enemy
apprising us of the trap into which we had walked. The Con-
federates, utterly bewildered, ignorant of the size of the force
pouring its fire into them, retreated, and the gun—though
Private John H. Dobbin even then made great efforts to fire
it—fell into the hands of the enemy, together with a great
part of the detachment, among whom were Cannoneers Dou-
glass Sandford, J. A. Brown, Garvin Wightman, James and
Tsaac Dodd, the brave Southern soldier now in the Home at
Raleigh. The Federal account of this event will be found in

48 Off. Rec. Union and Confed. Armes, 495.