374 NortH Carouina Troops, 1861-65.

been discharged on account of wounds and others not being
liable because they were State officers, but all of whom were
wi/ing to do duty in defense of their State and their own im-
mediate homes.

In fact many officers and soldiers of the battalion had ren-
dered efficient service in the armies in the field and had re-
signed or been discharged because of disability caused by
wounds. Captain John Carson had been a First Lieutenant
in Company D, of the Sixth Regiment, and was lamed by a
wound received at Sharpsburg. He had partially recovered
and had become anxious to serve the cause again somewhere
and in some capacity. He was but a type of the older men
who belonged to these companies. The boys, who had passed
beyond parental control because of their liability under the
17 year conscript act, were the very best material for making
good soldiers. Had the war lasted another year they would
have been better known.

While Avery’s Battalion was en route for Watauga, and
before it reached there, a detachment from Franklin’s Divis-
ion of the Federal army, which had been sent from upper
East Tennessee, had surprised Bingham’s camp and captured
all of his men, who did not at the time happen to be at their
homes. While the battalion was camped in Watauga, infor-
mation was received of a proposed incursion from Tennessee
into the upper part of Burke County, and after sending a de-
tachment direct to Mitchell County, the battalion was moved
through the upper part of Burke and went to that county.
The invaders were a small predatory band, some of whom
were overtaken by the men sent in pursuit and a portion of
their booty was recaptured. About this time Franklin’s
whole Corps moved up to Bristol and Major-General Stone-
man, with a Division of splendidly equipped cavalry, passed
up the Watauga river near Valle Crucis, along the turnpike
by Blowing Rock, burned the cotton mill at Patterson, passed
down through Taylorsville and then moved north towards
Virginia. Meantime Kirk with two regiments of deserters
had established an outpost of Franklin’s command on the
turnpike at Blowing Rock. Avery’s battalion was moved
back across the mountains. It had from its organization up

_

SEVENTEENTH BATTALION. 375

to that time been able to protect the upper mountain counties
from constant robberies and had driven out of the State and
into the Federal Army some organized bands of raiders. But
in the face of a division of Federal soldiers, with outposts oc-
cupied by regiments, the battalion was withdrawn to the foot
of the mountains. Kirk sent out but one raiding party from
Blowing Rock. That party had gone but a short distance
below the head of Johns river when they found that a squad
(Miller’s Cavalry) of Avery’s Battalion could beat them at
their own game of bushwhacking.

Meantime, after receiving information as to the number
and disposition of Kirk’s men at Blowing Rock, and after
reading a dispatch from General Lee to General Martin, in
which the former expressed the opinion that Stoneman’s raid-
ers would return to upper East Tennessee by way of the lead
mines, in Smith County, Virginia, the writer boarded the
train for Salisbury with the purpose of pressing an applica-
tion previously made to have a battalion detached from the
garrison at Salisbury and moved up on the train at night to
aid his battalion in a proposed night attack upon Kirk’s camp
at Blowing Rock. When he reached Salisbury, he found that
General Bradley Johnson had gone to Greensboro, and Gen-
eral Gardner, in command there, was preparing to meet an
attack from Stoneman’s Division, which had crossed the
Yadkin at the Shallow Ford and was then moving on Salis-
bury. The result was that the writer was captured with
Colonel Stone of the Second Mississippi (since three times
Governor of his State) and seven or eight hundred other of-
ficers and men, and was marched by Taylorsville, Lenoir and
Blowing Rock under guard.

Meantime, upon the return of Stoneman’s Division, Mil-
ler’s company, a portion of whom were mounted men, met the
vanguard of the division near the Caldwell line and skir-
mished with them till they reached the town of Lenoir. They
narrowly escaped capture in the town itself by riding up to
the top of Hibriten. A portion of Stoneman’s command
was sent across the mountain to deliver the prisoners to Col-
onel Kirk, but most of his division moved to the west in two
bodies, one by way of Beattie’s Ford and Lincolnton to Ruth-