SIXTEENTH BATTALION.

(CAVALRY.)

By JOHN T. KENNEDY, Cotonet.

This battalion was formed in 1864 of the five North Caro-
lina companies which till then had served in the Seventh
Confederate (Cavalry) Regiment. By General Orders from
Richmond 11 July, 1864, there was added to this battalion
the three companies from this State in the Sixty-second
Georgia and Company C from the Twelfth North Carolina
Battalion, and the command was therein styled the Sixteenth
Batalion, the writer being its Lieutenant-Colonel command-
ing. It turned out, however, that the authorities had over-
looked the fact that the North Carolina company which had
been carried by the writer into the Sixty-second Georgia had
been recruited largely and had been made into two companies
commanded by J. A. Richardson and Geo. Dees. Adding
this additional company the Sixteenth Battalion was really
a regiment, which was soon recognized as the Seventy-fifth
North Carolina Regiment, the writer was made its Colonel,
Jno. B. Edelin Lieutenant-Colonel, and F. G. Pitts, Major.
In the pressure and hurry of events it was, however, still car-
ried in the official reports up to the surrender as the Sixteenth
Battalion. But under its proper title of the Seventy-fifth
North Carolina Regiment (Seventh Cavalry) its story has

been already told ante and need not be repeated here.
J. T. Kennepy.

Goxpssoro, N. C.,
9 April, 1901.

 

SEVENTEENTH BATTALION.

(AVERY'S BATTALION. )

By A. C, AVERY, Masor.

When Longstreet’s Corps moved North, and reunited with
Lee’s Army in the midst of the battle of the Wilderness, the
whole of East Tennessee was immediately occupied by the
Federal army, and North Carolina would have been invaded
by a separate army, had our Western railroad been built, and
possibly, if the high mountains on our Western border had
been traversed by such turnpikes as had then been-constructed
across the mountains in Virginia. After Longstreet went
North, most of the troops that were left to guard the frontier
of the State were posted from a point almost due west from
Asheville to the southwestern border of the State. The coun-
try north of Madison County was patrolled at most by a com-
pany of cavalry, and picketed by small squads of that com-
pany. Major Harvey Bingham had two full companies in
camp in Watauga and Captain Price, who had been dis-
charged from the First Cavalry, commanded a small, but ac-
tive company in Ashe County. These troops rendered effi-
cient service by driving back small predatory bands, who
were continually coming into the State from upper East Ten-
nessee. The approaches covered by the borders of Mitchell
and Yancey were comparatively unguarded.

General R. B. Vance had been in command of the district
composing Western North Carolina; but had been captured
while making a raid into Cocke County, Tennessee. Colonel
J. B. Palmer, who had been detached from his regiment, the
Fifty-eighth North Carolina, then in the Army of Tennessee,
at his own request, for the purpose, succeeded General Vance
as commander of the district.

Colonel George W. Kirk, who, afterwards acquired an un-
enviable celebrity by his connection with the Holden-Kirk

Nore.—This Battalion consisted of two companies of Infantry (A. and
C.) and one of Cavalry Co. B, Captain Miller.—Ep.