The battalion remained for some days at Camp Vance and was drilled by Lieutenant Bullock, a drill master. On 24 June, it was ordered to Raleigh and at Camp Holmes was uniformed and equipped with small rifles, which were very inferior and quite dangerous—to the “man behind the gun.”
On 26 June the battalion was ordered to Wilmington. It went into camp at Camp Davis. It afterwards did picket and patrol duty on Masonboro and Wrightsville Sounds under Colonel George Jackson. On 4 August it was ordered to report to General L. S. Baker, at Goldsboro, but returned to Wilmington 16 August and was again placed under Colonel Jackson’s command at Masonboro Sound.
On 2 September, under orders from the War Department, Major Ellington, who when elected Major was disabled from active service by wounds, and who afterwards recovered, was relieved of his command and sent to his company near Petersburg, Virginia. He was soon afterwards killed at Fort Harrison, Virginia. Major Ellington was a gallant officer and much beloved by the boys. It was a mistake to have relieved him. General Holmes afterwards secured a ruling of the War Department by which the officers of the Junior Reserves after they reached the age of 18, were retained with their commands. But the privates and non-commissioned officers were still required to be sent to General Lee as fast as they became eighteen years old.
Captain William G. Watson succeeded Major Ellington in the command of the battalion. In the fall, the battalion was ordered to Sugar Loaf, on the Cape Fear river, where for several months it did picket duty, drilled, etc. On 10 December it was ordered to Belfield, Va., under Colonel Jackson. Its further career will be traced in connection with the Fourth and Seventh Battalions from which it never after separated until Johnston’s surrender.
BELFIELD, VA.
On 8 December, 1864, General Whiting was notified by General Lee that the Fifth and Second Corps of Grant’s army, with Bragg’s Division of Cavalry, were moving under General Warren upon Weldon, and that they were near Belfield and that Hill and Hampton were following them. One object of this raid was to destroy the railroad bridge at Weldon and thus cut off supplies for Lee’s army from that direction. General Whiting at once ordered Colonel George Jackson to proceed with the Fourth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Battalions of Junior Reserves and four pieces of Paris’ Artillery with three days’ cooked rations, to Weldon, and there report for temporary service to General Leventhorpe, commanding. The latter, an Englishman by birth, was the first Colonel of the Thirty-fourth and then of the Eleventh North Carolina Regiments, and had done splendid service in clearing the enemy from the Roanoke river and in defending the Wilmington & Weldon Railway.
The four battalions assembled in Wilmington from Sugar Loaf and Smithville. Through the efforts of Major French, the troops were here shod. They were placed on flat cars and thus exposed, were transported to Weldon. The weather was intensely cold. More than once the train had to be stopped, fires made in the woods and some of the boys lifted from the train and carried to the fires and thawed out. Many went to sleep in their wet clothes to find them frozen stiff upon awakening. This suffering was undergone without a murmur. The old guard of Napoleon on the retreat from Moscow, never displayed more heroism and fortitude than did the boy-soldiers—the “Young Guard of the Confederacy.”
Under the law, the reserves could not be required to cross their State lines, but without hesitation and without an exception, the brave boys at Weldon hurried on to Belfield, Virginia, there to meet the invading foe. The Federals withdrew, leaving their dead unburied, after a sharp fire and repulse from the reserves who had just reached the battlefield, and the latter joined in the pursuit across the Meherrin river at Hicks’ Ford. On 17 December, 1864, the General Assembly of North Carolina, recognizing their heroism, passed the following resolutions:
“Whereas, The Legislature has heard with satisfaction of the good conduct of the officers and soldiers of the Junior Reserves and Home Guards, who volunteered to cross the State line into Virginia, in order to repel the late advance of the public enemy on Weldon; therefore,
“Resolved, That the officers and soldiers of the Junior Reserves and Home Guards, so acting, deserve the commendation of their fellow citizens, and are entitled to the thanks of this Legislature.”