RA a eee

PRS,

636 Nortru Carorina Troops, 1861-65.

that we held Stoneman’s vastly superior force. in check till
his flanking force had crossed the river above and were ready
to take us in the rear. Our scarcity of men forbade an ade-
quate force being placed at Flemming’s Ford to prevent the

enemy from crossing there.
T. Gzo. Warton.

Morganton, N. C.,
31 December, 1901.

Norr.—Col. Walton, who commanded the Home Guards in the fight
at Rocky Ford is now in his 86th year, but his account is clear and
valuable. A similar account of the event is also given by Major A. C.
Avery in the history of his Battalion, Vol. 4 (of this work) at p. 376.—

Ep.

HILLSBORO MILITARY ACADEMY;
ITS RELATION TO THE WAR.

By WILLIAM CAIN, Caper Caprarn, Company A.

In 1859 Colonel C. C. Tew, of South Carolina, established
a military school at Hillsboro, N. C., that was modeled after
the Military Academy at West Point and the State Military
Academies of Virginia and South Carolina. The usual four
years (college) course was prescribed and in addition a pre-
paratory course of one year was offered, which was perhaps
necessary in the beginning to ensure sufficient numbers to
make the school self-supporting.

Colonel Tew was a graduate of the South Carolina Mili-
tary Academy, afterwards a professor and in 1857-’9 super-
intendent of the Arsenal Academy at Columbia, S. C.

His thorough training and genius as a military man were
illustrated at Hillsboro, where in one year’s time, the corps
of cadets was thoroughly organized, uniformed, armed and
superbly drilled.

The value to the State of this trained body of young sol-
diers was appreciated as soon as the Civil War began, for
North Carolina had no other military school within her bor-
ders but this and the one at Charlotte under Colonel D. H.
Hill, also very recently organized, though there were a few
classical schools with military features.*

In 1861 when the State seceded, the number of students
at the H. M. A. was one hundred and thirty. Very soon a
large number of men who had been elected officers in the Con-
federate Army and who were entirely without military train-

*The school of Capt. C. B. Denson contributed several valuable offi-
cers to the State, see Vol. 4, page 420. There were several other
schools of like character. As indicative of the patriotism of the youth,
Horner’s school at Oxford, all presumably under 17, met en masse 1
March, 1865, and tendered their services to Governor Vance to help de-
fend the State in her last extremity.—Ep.