Field Officers of Fifty-sixth Regiment North Carolina Troops.
The field officers were all young, fine-looking men. Col. Paul F. Faison was tall, dark eyes, of the finest type of soldier, and we understood a West Point cadet. Lieut.-Col. Luke was about thirty years old, stout, medium size, sanguine temperament. Maj. John W. Graham, the son of an illustrious father, who served his State as Governor and United States Senator, William A. Graham. Major Graham, promoted from Captain of Company D, was quite young, stout and hardy, always at his post except when disabled by wounds—full of youth and enthusiasm, he always proved himself the bravest of the brave. He is a prominent lawyer in his native town, Hillsboro. He has served as Secretary of State and as State Senator, and is one of the most prominent members of that body at session 1907. Maj. H. F. Schenck, who preceded Maj. Graham by one year’s service, resigned on account of failure of health, and was assigned to service in the commissary department. Major Schenck is an affable gentleman of the highest type of citizen, a most useful and successful business man of his county, Cleveland. He is the promoter and manager of several cotton mills and a branch railroad. His chief partner is a Mr. Reynolds, of Philadelphia, Pa. Colonel Faison served in the Interior Department of the United States as Indian Agent under President Cleveland’s last administration. He died while in that service in Oklahoma Territory. Capt. Losson Harrell, M.D., of Company I, from Rutherford County, was Senior Captain and commanded the Fifty-sixth Regiment a part of the time during the siege of Petersburg. He has been for several years a member of the State Board of Health. Both Harrell and Schenck have also served as State legislators, and both are fine types of physical manhood.
All the captains were fine looking men, but we mention especially Captain Mills, of Company G, Henderson County, and Captain Alexander, Company K, Mecklenburg County—young, tall, and bravest of the brave. During the last week in May, 1864, in the breastworks at Bermuda Hundreds, on the morning that we took Gen. B. F. Butler’s picket line and our dead and wounded were brought back, Capt. Alexander was standing in the midst of our company talking to our Captain Grigg, one of our young men, Thomas Nowlin, a gallant soldier and a cousin of mine, was seized with an epileptic fit, when Captain Alexander was the first to his assistance, and, kneeling over him, did everything he could for him. If he had been one of his own men or even a brother he could not have shown more sympathetic interest. This greatly impressed me as to the real character of the man, and verified the adage, “the bravest are the tenderest.” I was greatly hurt a few weeks later when this noble young officer fell in battle. I think about the 20th of August, on the Weldon railroad. He was of the sanguine temperament of the Scotch-Irish type.
Our Captain, B. F. Grigg, had a wife and baby that he thought more of than of the Confederacy after hope of success was on the wane. He held out faithful to the end, but was so glad when the cruel war was over that he turned Republican and was for many years postmaster at Lincolnton and a successful merchant. He went in early—joined First Regiment of six months’ volunteers—and was in first battle at Bethel, Va.; but he got enough by and by, and wanted to quit.
Brigadier-General Matt. W. Ransom, our Brigade Commander, is too well known to the people of this country to require an extended introduction by me, he having served twenty-four years in the United States Senate and four years as Minister to Mexico. All who have known him recognize in him the highest type of the old-time Southern Christian gentleman. As an officer he held the deserved love and highest respect of all his men. He was scholarly, gentle, sympathetic, and a most pleasant and entertaining orator. He would go anywhere in the State to address his old soldiers, always giving them the most patriotic advice. He was an enthusiastic optimist on the great resources and possibilities of our great united country. The last time he addressed the Confederate Veterans of Shelby, N. C., about two years before he died, money was raised and tendered him to pay his expenses, when he said, “No! no! I can not take the boys’ money; I don’t need it, and if I did I could not take it.”
Among the younger officers none excelled General Hoke, of Lincolnton, N. C. He entered the army as a company officer at less than twenty-four years of age. He was soon Colonel of the Twenty-first North Carolina Regiment, then Brigadier-General. He had not handled a brigade long until General Lee witnessed one of his gallant and most successful assaults and rode out of his way to compliment him personally, and there is no doubt, as the sequel will show, but that General Lee ever after held him in his highest confidence. He was with Stonewall Jackson in all his most brilliant campaigns. After his gallant brigade had been worn to a frazzle following Gettysburg, he was sent back to North Carolina to rest and recruit. After a few months of comparative rest, he boarded a train at Weldon, N. C., and went to Richmond to President Davis and presented a campaign for Eastern North Carolina, upon the completion of the gun-boat, Albemarle, nearing completion at Halifax, N. C., stating that he thought with two brigades beside his own that he could take Plymouth, Washington and New Bern, N. C., and thus clear his State of all its invaders. President Davis heard him patiently and then said he was glad to hear some one who still thought something could be done, and said he would transfer some ranking officers and give him the forces suggested. This writer got these facts from his uncle, Gen. John F. Hoke. General Pickett had made an expedition against New Bern February 1, 1864, with six brigades, and could easily have taken it had not some of his plans miscarried. An account of General Hoke’s taking Plymouth and Washington and his service at Drury’s Bluff and at Cold Harbor are given in a former chapter. General Hoke was sent back to North Carolina and commanded at Wilmington, N. C., finally surrendering with General Johnson. General Hoke is very modest about exploiting his brilliant military career; but we have it on the authority of the Charlotte Observer that during the last months of the war General Lee became apprehensive that his health might give way at any time, and looking over the whole field, selected General Hoke to take his place as his successor, and had such an understanding with President Davis and General Hoke. At the beginning of the Spanish-American War, we heard that President McKinley offered General Hoke a Brigadiership, and he modestly declined it. The writer met General Hoke twenty-five years after the war, and upon complimenting his brilliant campaigns, as an actor and eye-witness, he said, “Yes, when I had to fight them I tried to go at it so as to make them think I was not afraid of them.” He said he was not quite twenty-eight years old when the war closed. General Hoke is an uncle to Governor Hoke Smith, of Georgia. Besides being with General Hoke in his Eastern North Carolina and Drury’s Bluff campaigns, I got most of my information from Capt. L. E. Powers, now of Rutherfordton, N. C., who served with General Hoke first in the Twenty-first North Carolina Regiment and then in his brigade, and under him through four years. Captain Powers has represented his county three terms in the Legislature. He says he has been under fire with General Hoke in about forty engagements and was wounded several times.