The Last Ninety Days of the War in North-Carolina

by Cornelia Phillips Spencer

General Pettigrew shared in the march under General Johnston into the Peninsula, and afterward in the retreat upon Richmond. On the 1st day of June, 1862, in the battle of Seven Pines, he was severely wounded by a ball which passed transversely along the front of his throat and so into the shoulder, cutting the nerves and muscles which strengthen the right arm. This occurred in a charge which he had headed with great gallantry. He was left upon the field for dead, and recovered his consciousness only to find himself in the hands of the enemy. Some weeks later his exchange was effected, and, being still an invalid, he was placed in command at Petersburg. The exigencies of the service having required his regiment to be transferred to another brigade, he found, upon his return, that it had been placed under the gallant—and now, alas! lamented—General Pender. By degrees a new brigade assembled around General Pettigrew, and such was his pains in its instruction, and such the desire among the North-Carolina soldiers to make part of his command, that by the close of the year he was at the head of a brigade which, in point of quality, numbers, and soldierly bearing, was equal to any in the army. He commanded this brigade in repelling the Federal raid into Martin county, late in the fall of 1862, and again in General Foster's expedition against Goldsboro, in December, 1862, and although the quick dexterity of the enemy in falling back did upon neither occasion afford him and his associates an opportunity of trying conclusions with them, yet upon both occasions the magnificent appearance of Pettigrew's Brigade tended greatly to revive the spirit of a community recently overrun by the enemy. He was also with General D.H. Hill during the spring of this year, in his attempt upon Washington in this State; and in the very brilliant affair at Blount's Creek gave the public a taste of what might be expected from his abilities when untrammeled by the orders of a superior.

At the time of General Stoneman's raid on the north of Richmond, General Pettigrew was ordered to the protection of that city, and shortly afterward took position at Hanover Junction. His brigade subsequently made part of the Army of Northern Virginia, and accompanied General Lee into Pennsylvania. At the battle of Gettysburgh he was in command of General Heth's division, and won many laurels. His division was greatly cut up. The loss of his brigade in killed and wounded was so heavy as almost to destroy its organization. He himself was wounded by a ball which broke one of the bones of his hand. He regarded it so little as not to leave the field. Moving afterward with General Lee to Hagerstown and the Potomac, it devolved upon General Pettigrew, on the night of the 13th and the morning of the 14th of July, to assist in guarding the passage of that part of the army which recrossed at Falling Water. About nine o'clock in the morning of the latter day, having been in the saddle all night, General Pettigrew and other officers had thrown themselves upon the ground for a few moments' rest, when a party of Federal cavalry rode into their midst. In the mêlée which ensued General Pettigrew was shot—the ball taking effect in the abdomen and passing through his body. When the enemy had been repulsed, he was taken up by his sorrowing soldiers and carried across the river some seven miles into Virginia, along the track of the army. Upon the next day he was carried some fifteen miles further, to the house of Mr. Boyd at Bunker Hill, where he received every attention of which his situation allowed. Upon General Lee's expressing great sorrow for the calamity, he said that his fate was no other than one might reasonably anticipate upon entering the army, and that he was perfectly willing to die for his country. To the Rev. Mr. Wilmer he avowed a firm persuasion of the truths of the Christian religion, and said that in accordance with his belief he had some years before made preparations for death, adding, that otherwise he would not have entered the army. He lingered until the 17th, and then at twenty-five minutes after six in the morning, died, quietly and without pain. The expression of sympathy for his sad fate was universal. Private soldiers from other commands and distant States, vied with his own in repeated inquiries after his condition. Upon its way to Raleigh his body was received by the authorities and by the citizens everywhere with all possible respect and attention. On the morning of Friday, the 24th of July, the coffin, wrapped in the flag of the country, and adorned with wreaths of flowers and other tributes of feminine taste and tenderness, lay in the rotunda of the Capitol, where, within the year, had preceded him his compatriots Branch and Anderson. Later in the day the State received his loved and honored remains into her bosom.

It was a matter of great gratification to North-Carolina when this son, after an absence of a few years, gladly returned to her service. She views his career in arms with a just pride. She will ever reckon him among the most precious of her jewels; and will hold him forth as the fittest of all exemplars to the coming generations of her young heroes. Chief among his triumphs will it be reckoned that in the midst of his elevation and of the high hopes which possessed his soul, he so demeaned himself as to secure a place, hallowed by grief, in many an humble heart throughout North-Carolina. His name is to be pronounced reverently and with tears by the winter fireside of many a hut; and curious childhood will beg to have often repeated the rude stories in which soldiers shall celebrate his generosity, his impartiality, his courtesy, and his daring. It is true that many eyes which flashed with enthusiasm as their favorite urged his gray horse into the thick of the battle, are forever dull upon the fatal hills of Pennsylvania; but this will render his memory only the more dear to the survivors; what of his fame was not theirs originally, they will claim to have inherited, from the dead around Gettysburgh.

If this story has been properly told, little remains to be said by way of comment. A young man of very rare accomplishments and energy, fitted equally for the cloister of the scholar and for the field of battle, has been snatched from our midst. Admirably qualified to be of assistance to the country as a soldier or as a statesman, General Pettigrew has been suddenly removed at the very commencement, as it were, of his career.

Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra
Esse sinent.

Although what he has achieved is sufficient for fame, that which impresses the observer most forcibly is that such vast preparation should, in the course of Providence, be defeated of an opportunity for display at all commensurate with what seemed its reasonable requirements. Under the circumstances his death looks like a prodigious waste of material. It adds a striking illustration to that class of subjects which has always been popular in poetry, and in morals whether heathen or Christian. It appears very clearly that the Ruler of all things is under no necessity to employ rare talents and acquirements in the course of His awful administration, but in the crisis of great affairs can lay aside a Pettigrew with as little concern as any other instrument, even the meanest.

Upon some fitting occasion no doubt his friends will see that the public is furnished with a more suitable and detailed account of the preparation he had made to do high service to his generation. It will then be better known that no vulgar career of ambition, and no ordinary benefit to his country, had presented itself to him as worthy of the aims and endowments of James Johnston Pettigrew.