Site Visit Saturday: Fox’s Gap and Brig. Gen. Samuel Garland, Jr.

    Do lawyers make good generals?  Some of them have. Others, not so much. There were a slew of lawyers who became Confederate generals, such as Lawrence Branch, John B. Gordon, Theodore W. Brevard, Jr., Daniel W. Adams, and Alpheus Baker, just to name a few. Included in the bunch was Samuel Garland, Jr.

   Born in Lynchburg, Virginia on December 16, 1830, Samuel Garland, Jr., was the great-grandnephew of United States President James Madison. His father was an attorney (who died when Samuel was ten years old). Samuel was educated in a private school in Nelson County, then at Randolph Macon College, and finally, the Virginia Military Academy, where he graduated in 1849, third in his class. He went on to study law at the University of Virginia, and after John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry organized a militia company. When the war came, that company became a part of the 11^th Virginia Infantry, and Garland was commissioned the regiment’s colonel. Garland and his regiment fought at the battle of Manassas in July 1861, as a part of Brig. Gen. James Longstreet’s brigade. Following the battle of Seven Pines, in which Garland was wounded in the elbow, he was promoted to brigadier general. He commanded a North Carolina brigade composed of the 5^th, 12^th, 13^th, 20^th, and 23^rd Regiments.

 

Garland Marker, Fox's Gap

   With the reorganization of the Army of Northern Virginia following the Seven Days campaign, Garland found his brigade in D.H. Hill’s Division, Jackson’s wing. During the Maryland Campaign, while the rest of Jackson’s command invested Harper’s Ferry, D.H. Hill’s command was sent to guard the gaps across South Mountain, protecting the rear of Jackson’s forces capturing the town. At the beginning of the fight, Garland was ordered to take his brigade and defend the National Pike. D.H. Hill wrote after the battle that “The firing had aroused that prompt and gallant soldier, General Garland, and his men were under arms when I reached the pike. I explained the situation briefly to him, directed him to sweep through the woods, reach the road, and hold it at all hazards, as the safety of Lee's large train depended upon its being held. He went off in high spirits and I never saw him again. I never knew a truer, better, braver man. Had he lived, his talents, pluck, energy, and purity of character must have put him in the front rank of his profession, whether in civil or military life.”  During the fighting at Fox’s Gap, Garland was struck in the back by a bullet that passed through his body. His last words were “I am killed. Send for the Senior colonel.”

   Following his death, Garland was interred at the Presbyterian Cemetery in Lynchburg, next to the graves of his wife and son who had passed in June and July 1861 of influenza.

   In September 1993, the Sons of Confederate Veterans erected a commemorative marker near the spot of Samuel Garland’s death. I last visited the site in May 2011.

Confederates beyond the War - Governors

One of those questions floating around my mind on Sunday as I drove to Raleigh was how many governors in North Carolina had Confederate service behind them: several, it turns out. An even greater question is how the military experience of these men influenced their lives and hence the direction of the state. We'll save that one for another post.

Brogden

William W. Holden (1865) was appointed military governor at war's end by US President Andrew Johnson. He was a newspaper editor and had no military experience.

Jonathan Worth (1865-1868) was elected in late 1865. He was a strong Unionist and never really supported the war. Worth was appointed state treasurer by the General Assembly in 1862, and he held the post until elected governor.

William W. Holden (168-1871) was elected to serve a regular term, but was impeached in 1871.

Tod Robinson Caldwell (1871-1874) took over after the impeachment of Holden. The new state constitution of 1868 provided for a lieutenant governor, and Caldwell was the first to hold the position. Like Worth, Holden was a Unionist, but had served as a solicitor of Rutherford County during the war years.  

Curtis Hooks Brogden (1874-1877) was state comptroller during the war years. He was a Democrat at the start of the War and supported Vance for governor, but like Holden and Worth, moved toward the Republican party once the war ended. Brogden was Caldwell's lieutenant governor, and took over the governorship when Caldwell died in office.

Jarvis

Zebulon Baird Vance (1877-1879) was the first Confederate military officer to hold the position of governor after the War ended. Vance had served as a company officer in the 14th North Carolina State Troops, and as colonel of the 26th North Carolina Troops, before being elected governor in 1862. He was reelected in 1864, but arrested in May 1865, and unable to hold political office for a number of years after the end of the war. His third term as governor only lasted a couple of years, he was sent to the United States senate in 1877.

Thomas Jordan Jarvis (1879-1885) was originally a private in Company L, 17th North Carolina Troops, joining on May 4, 1861. Two weeks later, he was appointed a lieutenant in the 8th North Carolina State Troops and transferred. Jarvis was captured when Roanoke Island fell on February 8, 1862, but was back with the army by November 1862. In April 1863, he was promoted to captain of Company B. He was wounded in the right shoulder at Drewry's Bluff in ay 1864, and reported absent wounded the rest of the war.

Scales

Alfred Moore Scales (1885-1889) was elected captain of what became Company H, 13th North Carolina Troops on April 30, 1861. In October, he was elected colonel of the same, replacing William Dorsey Pender, who was appointed colonel of the 6th North Carolina State Troops. Scales was wounded in the right thigh at Chancellorsville, and then promoted to brigadier general on June 13, 1863.  Scales was again wounded at Gettysburg, then fought through the Overland Campaign, but appears to have been sick the last months of the war.

Daniel Gould Fowle (1889-1891) was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 31st North Carolina Troops on September 19, 1861. He was also captured when Roanoke Island fell in early 1862. Fowle was defeated for reelection when his regiment was reorganized in September 1862. Fowle served in the General Assembly, then as adjutant general, then was back in the General Assembly after a disagreement with Vance. He also died in office while serving as governor.

Thomas Michael Holt (1891-1893), lieutenant governor, filled the unexpired term of Fowle. Holt does not appear  to have served during the war. Instead, he stayed and managed part of his family's textile interests, namely the Granite Mill on the Haw River.

Elias Carr (1893-1897), as the story goes, was a private in Company G, 3rd North Carolina Cavalry, serving from September 1861 through June 1862. He was then called back to North Carolina to manage his very large farm. It appears that Carr later served as a sergeant in Company K, 67th North Carolina Troops, and possibly as a private in Company A, 8th Battalion North Carolina Partisan Rangers.

Daniel Lindsay Russell (1897-1901) was appointed a 1st lieutenant in the "Lamb Artillery" on May 5, 1862. The battery was also known as Company G, 2nd North Carolina Artillery. He was promoted Captain in January 1863, but was court martialed for assaulting another officer. He was later restored to his command, but resigned in February 1865. He was also a Republican.

Russell was the last Confederate veteran to serve as governor of North Carolina.

Rockingham County

It’s been a while since I posted one of my county histories. So, I thought this morning, we would look at Rockingham County.

Rockingham County, located along the state’s northern border, was created in 1785 from portions of Guilford County. The county was named for Charles Watson Wentworth, the Second Marquis of Rockingham, a member of the British Parliament who advocated American independence. The county seat is Wentworth, named for the marquis, and was incorporated in 1799.

In 1860, Rockingham County had a total population of 16,746 people, including 6,318 slaves and 407 free persons of color. In the 1860 presidential election the county cast 1,017 votes for Breckinridge, 485 for Bell, and162 for Douglas. When the time came for the proposition of calling a state convention to consider the question of secession in February 1861, Rockingham County voted 808 to 570 in favor of the idea. Representing the county at the secession convention in May 1861 were Dr. Edward T. Brodnax, a War of 1812 veteran and a representative in both the state house and senate. The other Rockingham County representative was former North Carolina governor David S. Reid. Besides serving as governor, he was also a state senator, a representative in the US House, a US Senator, delegate to the Peace Congress, and a member of the Confederate Congress.

Companies from Rockingham County include Companies H, I, and K, 13th NCST; Company G, 14th NCST; Company L, 21st NCT; and Companies A, D, E, F, G, H, and K, 45th NCT.

While Rockingham County saw no large troop movements, or pitched battles, there are numerous points of interest. Alfred M. Scales, a Confederate brigadier general, was born in Rockingham County in 1829. Scales was a lawyer and represented his area in the state house in 1852 and 1856, and in the US House in 1857. During the war, Scales served as colonel of the 13th NCST, and was promoted to brigadier general on June 13, 1862. His brigade consisted of the 13th, 16th, 22nd, 34th, and 38th NCT regiments. Following the war, Scales continued to practice law and served again the state house, and in 1874, in the US House, where he remained until 1884, when he was elected governor of North Carolina. He retired from politics in 1889, and served as president of Piedmont Bank in Greensboro, and as an elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Greensboro. He died in 1892 and is buried in the Green Hill Cemetery in Greensboro. There is a historical marker off NC 87 that talks of his birthplace.

Another point of interest is a home, located two miles east of Madison, in which in 1847, Stephen Douglas married Martha Martin. The local family connection did not seem to help Douglas carry the county in the 1860 presidential race.

Rockingham County was also the birthplace of Thomas Settle, Jr., in 1831. Prior to the war, Settle was a lawyer and served in the NC House in 1854, and in 1858, became speaker of the house. He was also on the board of directors of UNC (there was only one at the time). During the war, he served for a year as a captain in the 3rd North Carolina Infantry. After the war, he was a member of the 1865-66 Constitutional Convention, and in the fall of 1865, was elected to the NC Senate, where in he was elected speaker of the senate. He soon became one of the leading founders of the Republican Party in North Carolina. He was elected an associate justice of the state supreme court in 1868, and then in 1871, served as ambassador to Peru. In 1872 he was back in North Carolina where he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the supreme court bench. He tried twice to run for governor, and was defeated the last time by Zeb Vance in an election known as “The Battle of the Giants.” Afterwards, Settle was appointed to a US District Court as a judge in Florida, serving until his death in 1888. He is also buried in Greensboro.

Surprisingly, Rockingham County has fully embraced the North Carolina Civil War Trails Marker program. The county has seven markers in the county, denoting Scales’s law office; the important rail link over the Dan River; Annie Eliza Johns, a nurse in the hospitals in Danville, Virginia; the Leaksville Cotton Mill; and the Wentworth Cemetery, among others. You can check out the list here.

Charlotte during the war

I thought I would spend a little more time dealing with Charlotte’s war-time history.
Historiography: To my knowledge, there has only been one work written since the end of the war. This was a work entitled: On the Home Front: Charlotte During the Civil War.. It was published in 1982 by the Mint Museum and only contains 20 pages. There have been other works that mention the war years, including John B. Alexander’s two works: The History of Mecklenburg County: From 1740 to 1900 (1902), and, Reminiscences of the Past Sixty Years (1908).

Charlotte, and Mecklenburg County, contributed numerous men to the Confederate cause. Of our first regiment that went off to war, two of the companies, the "Hornet Nest Rifles" (B) and the "Charlotte Grays" (C) hailed from the County. Col. D. H. Hill lived in Charlotte, as did Lt. Col. Charles C. Lee, Lt. John H. Wyatt (Assistant Commissary of Subsistence) and T. B. Boyd, hospital steward.

Other companies from Mecklenburg include:
Co. A, 6th NCT
Co. D, 7th NCT
Co. A, 11th NCT
Co. E, 11th NCT
Co. H, 11th NCT
Co. B, 13th NCT
Co. K, 30th NCT
Co. G, 34th NCT
Co. H, 35th NCT
Co. C, 36th NCT
Co. I, 36th NCT
Co. C, 37th NCT
Co. I, 37th NCT
Co. K, 42nd NCT
Co. B, 43rd NCT
Co. F, 49th NCT
Co. B, 53rd NCT
Co. K, 56th NCT

What about in Charlotte proper?

The old US Mint building, now known as the Mint Museum, served both as a headquarters building and a hospital. There was also a Wayside hospital (near Morehead street) in Charlotte. Most of the Confederate dead in the Confederate section of Oakwood Cemetery were buried beside this hospital. Charles C. Lee, mentioned above, is buried in this cemetery (killed while leading the 37th NCT in battle), as is Rufus Barringer, and Thomas Drayton.

Also in Charlotte was a manufacturing facility for the Confederate Navy. Charlotte was also the home of Julia Jackson, wife of Stonewall Jackson. During the last days of the war, Jefferson Davis held his last cabinet meeting in Charlotte, and was in Charlotte when he heard of the death of Lincoln.

More to come...