James Atkinson, the 33rd North Carolina, and Fort Gregg.

   At least one soldier escaped from Fort Gregg. His name was James Atkinson, a member of the 33^rd North Carolina Troops. Not only do post-war accounts record his escaping; he also left bearing the flag of his regiment.

   James W. Atkinson was born in 1844, probably in Cumberland County, North Carolina. He volunteered on March 1, 1862, and was mustered in as a private in Company G, 33^rd North Carolina Troops. Atkinson was wounded several times during the war, including Gaines Mill, Sharpsburg (in both hands), Chancellorsville (hip), Reams Station, and Jones Farm (leg). Atkinson was promoted to corporal on August 1, 1863. He was also captured during the battle of Hanover Court House in May 1862 but was able to escape. As early as August 25, 1864, he was serving as color sergeant, or, in the color guard.[1]

Atkinson holding the flag of the 51st NC. 

   After the breakthrough of the Confederate lines on the morning of April 2, 1865, Atkinson made his way to the rear with his flag. Presumedly, the flag was one of those issued to James H. Lane’s brigade in December 1862. These flags bore distinctive designations; battle honors painted with white scalloped letters. At some point, Atkinson either went to Fort Gregg or was assigned to Fort Gregg. Toward the end of the battle, Corporal Atkinson made his escape. Whether he was ordered out of the Fort, or simply took it upon himself to save his banner, is unknown.

   Several stories surfaced after the war about the actions of Atkinson. One in 1883, from a fellow veteran in Lane’s brigade, described the action from Battery 45: “Out from the sally-port [of Fort Gregg] quickly passed a single soldier, boyish of figure and lithe, but strong; and before Warren’s astonished troops could recover their wits, he had unfurled the flag which he bore, and, taking a position not a great way off, he waved the tattered colors in their very teeth. Volley after volley from the outer line of the enemy on the parapet answered his defiance, but without effect, so charmed did his young life seem; when, fixing the flag staff in his belt, he coolly marched away, the volleys still continuing-he with head aloft and color flying, down the ravine, up upon the dam connecting the two forts, and finally safely into the arms of his comrades.”[2]

   Recounting the notes of a speaker during a Confederate Memorial Day event in Fayetteville, a writer mentions the words of the orator, who was speaking on Fort Gregg and the sacrifices of the Confederates within the fort. “Among his audience there stood, unknown to the speaker, two of those brave and gallant men” who had been in Fort Gregg. One of those was James W. Atkinson. As the battle waned, Atkinson, “flag in hand retreated through the sallyport, and after he had gotten some three hundred yards from the fort, turned[,] unfurled his flag and waved it in defiance, at the enemy, then marched on as volley after volley was fired at him; turning time and again to give a parting salute, he safe and unscarred arrived amid the shouts of his comrades at battery 45.”[3]

   While his is a less elaborate story, William H. McLaurin, 18^th North Carolina, recalled in 1900 that as Fort Gregg fell, Lt. William O. Robinson, 18^th North Carolina, with “color sergeant James W. Atkinson… escaped after the fighting with clubbed muskets ceased. . .”[4]

   Another account appeared in 1901. After the defenders of Fort Gregg had run low on ammunition and began to hurl rocks and bricks, “a youth named Atkinson, from North Carolina, seized the tattered flag he and his comrades had so bravely defended and dashed over the parapet, followed by bullets from perhaps 500 rifles, but safely escaping with the trophy of his valor. . . After getting a short distance away, Atkinson turned, and, unfurling his flag, waived it defiantly at the enemy.”[5]

William W. Chamberlaine also mentioned seeing Atkinson. Chamberlaine was back in the inner Confederate line and could see Fort Gregg “very plainly. A color bearer ran out of the Fort with his flag; two men pursuing him, but he passed the little stream. Men near Battery 45 fired at his pursuers and they went back to Fort Gregg. So the color bearer escaped with his flag.”[6]

Flag of the 33rd NC, Museum of the Confederacy. 

   James W. Atkinson passed away in September 1909 and is buried in Cross Creek Cemetery, #2, in Fayetteville. His obituary writer also makes mention of the event, stating that Atkinson won an “enviable reputation for bravery, distinguishing himself principally at Fort Gregg. . . a deed that will live in history.”[7]

   And what became of Atkinson’s banner that he bore out of Fort Gregg? Great question. The flag bears the stencil mark of #433, indicating that at some point, it was captured and later turned in to the War Department. Two other flags belonging to Lane’s brigades bear much lower numbers. The flag of the 37^th North Carolina, captured on the morning of April 2, is numbered 384. The flag of the 28^th North Carolina, surrendered at Appomattox Court House, is numbered 364. While all three of these flags are identified as North Carolina flags, they are currently held by the American Civil War Center, i.e., the old Museum of the Confederacy.[8]

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[1] Jordan, North Carolina Troops, 9:197.

[2] The Charlotte Democrat, July 6, 1883.

[3] The Observer, May 15, 1878.

[4] The Wilmington Messenger, November 18, 1900.

[5] Fayetteville Observer, July 4, 1901.

[6] Chamberlaine, Memories of the Civil War, 127.

[7] The Charlotte Observer, September 26, 1909.

[8] Rollins, The Returned Battle Flags, 37; Dedmondt, The Flags of Civil War North Carolina, 143, 125.

Killing Confederate Prisoners at Fort Gregg

   Any time someone mentions the killing of prisoners during the war, names like Fort Pillow, Saltville, Plymouth, and Champ Ferguson come to mind. In these events, it is always the Confederates killing their prisoners. It is rare to hear about similar atrocities being committed by Federal forces. Yet it apparently happened at the battle of Fort Gregg on April 2, 1865.

"Shoot and be Damned!"

   Following the debacle at Five Forks, southwest of Peterburg, Virginia, on April 1, 1865, U.S. Grant ordered the Federal forces to launch an assault on Confederate lines. Grant believed that given the amount of Confederates his forces faced at Five Forks, Confederate lines had to be weak some place. That assault, early on the morning of April 2, resulted in the breakthrough, most notably along Arthur’s Swamp, held by four regiments of Brig. Gen. James H. Lane’s North Carolina brigade. (There were, of course, other breakthroughs of the line.) Many of Lane’s men not gobbled up in the ensuing early morning breakthrough, or the ensuing counterattack, drifted back towards Battery 45 and the inner Confederate lines. A portion of Lane’s men, along with some men from Harris’s Mississippi brigade and Thomas’s Georgia brigade, were assigned to the defense of Fort Gregg.

   Fort Gregg, and its sister fort, Fort Whitworth, were the idea of Wade Hampton. Hampton proposed the idea of a series of fortifications between the main Confederate line and the inner Confederate line in a letter to Lee in September 1864.[1] Fort Gregg was a crescent-shaped earthen fort. The fort had four cannon emplacements and a palisade fence across the back. Fort Whitworth was an enclosed earthen fortification. Fort Whitworth is sometimes referred to as Fort Baldwin. Both forts were named for local families and both situated in between the two Confederate lines, designed to slow down a Federal advance if the first line of fortifications were breached. As a permanent garrison Fort Gregg had a detachment of 100 artillerymen, mostly drivers, from several different batteries, along with two guns belonging to Chew’s 4^th Maryland Artillery. Fort Whitworth had a contingent of the Washington Artillery from Louisiana, along with the 18^th and 48^th Mississippi from Harris’s brigade. 

   Crowding into Fort Gregg were members of the 12^th and 16^th Mississippi, 18th, 28^th, 33^rd, and 37^th North Carolina, and the 14^th, 35^th, 45^th, and 49^th Georgia Infantry regiments, plus the artillerymen, and an estimated 334 Confederate soldiers.[2] The Federal attack commenced about noon, and there were at least three different waves of Federal attackers. The final wave was able to break through the back entrance to Fort Gregg, while at the same time, use the embankment created by an unfinished line of breastworks connecting the two forts. Confederates inside Fort Gregg were running low on ammunition, some resorting to hurling rocks and bricks at the attackers. On the third attempt, the Federals were able to break through. Some Confederates continued to fight on. Lawrence Barry, 3^rd Company, Washington Artillery, had the lanyard of his cannon in his hand as Federals came over the works. An officer told him to drop the lanyard or they would fire. “Shoot and be damned!” he told the Federal, pulling the lanyard and obliterating several Federal soldiers. Those remaining opened fire, killing Barry.[3]

   Many Confederates surrendered. Yet there were several stories that emerged that the surrender of some were not accepted. In 1867, Lt. Dallas Rigler, 37^th North Carolina, wrote to James H. Lane about the attack. He mentioned running low on ammunition, using “bats and rocks,” and then the Federals scaling the wall. They entered Fort Gregg’s “walls and after a short struggle they took the fort and some few did fire on after they got possession but their officers tried to stop them.”[4] Captain A. K. Jones, 12^th Mississippi, believed that the Federals “were under the influence of whiskey,” and because of the stiff resistance offered by the Confederate defenders, which had produced “a bloody massacre” on Federal attackers, were planning to kill everyone within the Fort. It was the Federal officers “who with cocked pistols made the men desist. . . We lost about forty men killed in the fort after its capture. . . It was ten minutes before the shooting could be suppressed.”[5] George W. Richards, a surgeon attached to Fort Gregg, wrote that as the Federals swarmed into the fort, they “showed us no quarter.” Richards disagreed with Rigler and Jones as to why the Federals stopped killing the Confederates who had surrendered. “It was not so much their officers who caused them to desist from shooting us,” he wrote. Instead, it was when General Lee ordered Poague’s artillery to open fire on the Fort. “one shot after another in rapid succession drove all the enemy on the opposite side of the fort for shelter. Had it not been for Colonel Poague’s guns I believe they would have killed every one of us.”[6]

   Maj. Gen. John Gibbon, commanding the attacking force – the XXIV Corps, agreed that the defenders of the fort held on to the very last, writing that the assault was “one of the most desperate of the war” and that fort was only taken “by the last of several determined dashes with the bayonet.”[7] Brig Gen. Robert S. Foster agreed with Gibbon: “The fighting on both sides at this point was the most desperate I ever witnessed, being a hand to hand struggle for twenty-five minutes” after the Federals gained the parapet.[8]

   Some of the rank-and-file Federals echoed the Confederates. In an 1889 history of the 39^th Illinois can be found a letter about the assault, a Federal officer wrote that he was one of the first over the walls, witnessing the carnage inside. It “was with the greatest difficulty that we could prevent our infuriated soldiers from shooting down and braining all who survived of the stubborn foe.”[9] A member of the 12^th West Virginia recalled that on the order to charge, “in they went, with an irresistible rush, maddened at the slaughter of their late comrades, and determined to avenge their deaths. That onslaught could not be checked…”[10]

   In the end, the assault cost the Federals, according to John Gibbon’s report, 122 men killed, and 592 wounded. Confederate losses are placed at 57 killed, 243 wounded and captured, with 33 more unwounded captured. All of this to capture two forts that would have abandoned overnight regardless of any other Federal advances. The killing of Confederate soldiers after they had surrendered was quietly chalked up to “maddened” or “infuriated soldiers,” and quietly forgotten. The war in Virginia would all be over in about a week’s time.[11]

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[1] Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 15.

[2] Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 234.

[3] Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 182.

[4] Dallas Rigler to James H. Lane, June 17, 1867, Lane Papers, AU.

[5] Jones, “The Battle of Fort Gregg,” SHSP, Vol. 31, 56-60.

[6] “Fort Gregg Again,” SHSP, Vol. 31, 370-372. More accounts can be found in Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 183-188.

[7] ORs., Vol. 46, 1:1174.

[8] ORs., Vol. 46, 1:1177.

[9] Clark, The History of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment Illinois Volunteer Veteran Infantry, 255.

[10] Egan, The Flying, Gray-haired Yank, 391.

[11] ORs, Vol. 46, 1:1174; Fox, The Confederate Alamo, 229.