HILLSBORO MILITARY ACADEMY
(IN SPRING OF 1865.)

By CADET J. GEORGE HANNAH.

The Legislature, session of 1863 and 1864, passed an act
exempting all cadets at the school, and all that entered before
they were seventeen, from service, subject to the call of the
Governor (before this act, the boys were sent to the army as
soon as they reached the proper age.) We were ordered to
Salisbury at the time of Stoneman’s raid, but failed to reach
that place in time for the fight, and returned to Hillsboro,
where we remained till March, when we were ordered to
Raleigh. To show how anxious we were to take part in the
war, I remember two of the smaller boys of my company,
Jno. C. Haigh, of Fayetteville, and R. L. Heriot, of South
Carolina, getting rocks to stand upon to make them taller, as
orders were, for about one dozen of the smallest boys to be
detailed to remain and guard the barracks.

On arrival at Raleigh we spent the first night in the second
story of the old market house and were afterwards sent to
Camp Mangum, and put in charge of exchange of Yankee
prisoners, taking them from Salisbury to Goldsboro, and turn-
ing them over to the Junior Reserves, who carried them to Wil-
mington. We remained at Raleigh until General Johnston’s
army came, when we were ordered to Hillsboro and were dis-
banded a few days before General Johnston surrendered.

Our battalion of cadets composed two hundred or more.
Nearly half of the boys were from the different Southern
States. Captain Tucker, of South Carolina (one of the pro-
fessors) commanded the battalion of cadets, comprising two
companies, viz. :

Company A, Cadet Captain William Cain, of Hillsboro
(now Professor of Mathematics at the University of North

Carolina. )