470 Nort Carormna Troops, 1861-'65.

and also caused that grand old chieftain to tell General gee
when he rejoined his command just before the battle of Jones
Farm, that those three brigades, by their gallantry at Reams
Station, had placed not only North Carolina, but the whole
Confederacy, under a debt of gratitude which could never be
repaid.

In the Jones’ Farm fight this brigade oceupied the right,
soon routed the enemy in its front and on its right flank, and
captured a large number of prisoners.

It was in the Pegram House fight the next day that the
modest, but daring young Wooten, with his sharpshooters,
dashed into the enemy’s works, which were being shelled by
Brander’s Artillery, and returned with more prisoners than
he had men in his command. It was around that beleaguered
city—Petersburg—that the sharpshooters of this brigade be-
came still more famous and Wooten’s name was made so
familiar on the enemy’s skirmish line by his frequent and
most unexpected “pop calls.” It was Wooten’s brilliant Davis
House surprise that elicited congratulatory letters from his
Corps, Division and Brigade commanders, all of which were
embodied in a general order and read on parade.

It was this North Carolina brigade that, after its attenua-
ted line on the right at Petersburg had been broken by Grant
in the spring of 1865, stubbornly fought the enemy from be-
hind the winter quarters in real Indian style, as it slowly fell
back towards the interior lines, some of the men being ordered
to Battery or Fort Gregg, and others to the dam near Battery
45. It was chiefly the brave men of this brigade who were in
Battery Gregg, assisted by supernumerary artillerists, that
made the stubborn defense of that little earthwork one of the
most brilliant events of the war. It was from this battery
that James W. Atkinson, Color Bearer of the Thirty-third,
made his wonderful escape, after the parapet was crowded
with the enemy and some of them firing down on our men, 4
feat that was eagerly watched by both armies. Once or twice
he turned and waved his colors defiantly while the men
wildly cheered as he entered the inner line in safety.

After the fall of Fort Gregg and the enemy had reached the
river above and were enfilading the inner line, the brigade

THe Brancn-Laxe Biraave:. 471

‘was ordered to close to the right. The inner line had numer--
ous high traverses and it was a fiery ordeal.to all when they~
had to run around so many of them. Tt was of vital import-
ance to hold the inner line until night that the army might
withdraw under its cover across the only bridge left it over:
the Appomattox. Major Hale, the Adjutant-General,
mounted one of those high traverses and stood there until. the-
whole brigade had passed, cheering the men as they gallantly
moved to the right, and thus kept the enemy from entering
the inner line. Exposed as he was for such a length of time
and to such a heavy fire, his escape was miraculous.. A mon-
ument has been erected in Savannah to Sergeant J asper, and
counties and towns named for him, but his leaping the walls.
of Fort Sullivan and rescuing the fallen flag was as inferior:
to Major Hale’s act as the hotness of the fire and the length:
of exposure in Jasper’s case were less.

From Petersburg to Appomattox this brigade of brave and!
starving North Carolinians fought by day and marched by
night without a murmur; and when at Appomattox it was
ordered back from the front and told that General Lee had’
surrendered, officers and men burst into tears, and some were
heard to remark most feelingly: “And have we endured all
this for nothing ?”’

In a letter from a Northern military historian asking Gen-
eral Lane for information about the battle of Chancellors-
ville, he closes with the following playful, but gratifying
words: “If Lane’s Brigade had remained at home many
New England regiments would have been happier. It is ad-
mitted here that Lane’s boys were a bad, quarrelsome set of
fellows, and too fond of a fight altogether.”

General Lee’s complimentary letters and note about the
battles at Slash Church and Kinney’s Farm and Reams Sta-
tion, and the capture of the flags at Spottsylvania Court
House have been published in the Southern Historical Soci-
ety Papers; also General Trimble’s admiration of the con-
duct of this brigade at Gettysburg. Copies of the congratu-
latory letters to Major Wooten are on file in the War Records
Office in Washington. Most of the official reports relating
to this brigade have been published in the “Southern Histori-