372 NortH Carorina Troops, 1861-’65.

war, and who had been allowed by the Federal Government
to organize a regiment, composed for the most part of North
Carolina deserters, in June, 1864, led an incursion across this
unguarded portion of our frontier and surrounded a conscript
camp at Berry’s Mill Pond, six miles below Morganton, just
above what was then the terminus of the Western North Car-
olina Railroad. He surprised and captured at that place
over one hundred of the Junior Reserves, who had been gath-
ered there to be organized into a battalion. While the militia
and citizens who did not belong to the Home Guards were
gathering on the day of the capture at Morganton, 28 June,
one of Kirk’s scouts was shot but a half mile from Morganton
by R.C. Pearson, a leading citizen of the town. On the second
day thereafter a small squad of mounted men fired into the
van of Kirk’s command at the foot of the Brown Mountain,
but he eluded them and reached the Winding Stairs, a nar-
row path near the top of Jonas Ridge, where he posted a
strong detachment, while his prisoners were being moved on
into East Tennessee. Here he was attacked by a body of
men, composed of a few regular soldiers on furlough and sev-
eral hundred militia, hurriedly gathered together from the
counties of Burke, Caldwell, Catawba and Rowan, the whole
body being under the command of Colonel H. A. Brown, of
the First North Carolina Regiment, who had just recovered
from a wound and turned out of his way to his command at
Salisbury to help his neighbors. In the attempt to take this
narrow path, Hon. W. W. Avery was mortally wounded and
Calvin Houk and a number of others were seriously injured.

The excitement caused by this invasion induced the War
Department at Richmond to order General Martin to estab-
lish headquarters at Morganton and assume command of the
District of Western North Carolina. The writer, who was
serving on the staff of Lieutenant-General Hood at the Chat-
tahoochee river, first secured a leave of absence by the kind-
ness of General Hood, and was then transferred to the De-
partment of North Carolina in consequence of the death of all
of his older brothers and the desperate illness of his father,
and ordered to report to General Martin as Adjutant-General
of the district. In the fall of the same year, when the writer

 

SEVENTEENTH BaTration. 373

was about to resign, and General Martin was contemplating
the removal of his headquarters to Asheville, the General in-
sisted that a number of local companies then formed and
being formed, should be organized first into a battalion and
then into a regiment, and obtained authority from the War
Department for the writer to organize a regiment of moun-
taineers to protect the northwestern frontier of the State.

Major Gordon, in his history of the organization of troops
(North Carolina Regiments, Vol. 1, page 22), accounts for
the organization of the battalion and the proposition to en-
large it into a regiment as follows:

“The War Department, at the suggestion of General Mar-
tin, who commanded this district at the close of the war, sus-
pended the conscript law, and there were no more runaways.
Major A. C. Avery was also authorized to raise a regiment for
local service. Some progress was made in recruiting several
companies for this regiment, but the Major was captured dur-
ing Stoneman’s raid. The regiment was never organized,
and, as far as known, the Major did not get his Colonel’s com-
mission. This was the last effort made to raise troops in the
State before the war closed.”

Accordingly, in February, 1865, Captain John Carson’s
company (Company A, of Avery’s Battalion) ; Captain Nel-
son A. Miller’s company (Company B), of Caldwell Coun-
ty, and Captain W. L. Twitty’s company (Company ©),
from Rutherford, were ordered to assemble at Morganton,
where they were furnished with arms, ammunition and equip-
ments, which Governor Vance had shipped at the request of
the writer from the State arsenal at Raleigh. At the same
time the Governor had forwarded a sufficient number of im-
proved arms to supply the companies of Major Bingham in
Watauga, and a few weeks later, the battalion composed of
these three companies was ordered to go to Watauga County
and provide Bingham’s companies with the arms and muni-
tions shipped for them. It was a part of the plan to organize
Price’s company, another company in Mitchell, still another
in Madison, and a second company in Rutherford County, out
of the body of young men just reaching the age for service
and those persons exempt from service, some of them having