404 NortH Caroiina Troops, 1861-’65.

Naval Battalion commanded by Commodore J. R. Tucker.
D. G. Conn, now residing in Raleigh, was First Sergeant.
While a member of Company L, Fifteenth North Carolina,
he received five wounds, all at Malvern Hill. There was
another North Carolina company in the same battalion of
which —. —. Watts, of Mecklenburg County, was Orderly
Sergeant. The officers of these companies were navy officers
who had no ships to command. This battalion in the spring
of 1865 was at Drewry’s Bluff and it took an honorable part
in the battle of Harper’s Farm (or Green Plains) under Gen-
eral Custis Lee, 6 April, 1865. These two companies were
taken prisoners there and carried to Point Lookout. They
were paroled at Newport News 19 June, 1865.

Moore’s Roster, Vol. 4, p. 443-449, gives a very imper-
fect list of the North Carolinians who enlisted in the navy
proper. Among the officers in the navy from this State were
Captain J. W. Cooke, of the Albemarle ; Commodore W. F.
Lynch, Captain J. N. Maffitt, Captain Jas. I. Waddell, of
the Shenandoah; Commodore W. T. Muse, of the North
Carolina, Lieutenants W. H. Kerr, W. T. Murphy, Thomas
L. Moore and Richard Battle, Master. The services of these
and other naval officers from this State are treated in other
articles in this work.

On the other hand, in the Sixty-fourth North Carolina,
there were two companies from Tennessee, and in the Twen-
ty-fifth North Carolina one company from Georgia and
South Carolina. But these were exceptional cases. In the
Revolutionary war we know the South Carolina commands of
Sumpter, Williams and others were almost entirely composed
of North Carolinians, though our sister State got credit for
them. So in 1861-65, aspiring men raising regiments near
the border in the adjoining States, largely recruited in this
State. Even as to commands raised by this State, Governor
Vance’s letter books show his repeated complaints that so
many of our regiments, and ofttimes our brigades, were com-
manded by men from other States. North Carolina has
always been singularly unassertive and over modest as to the
merits and capacity of her own sons, so much so that one of
her defamers has called her the “Boeotia of the South.”