50th North Carolina, Co. F (David)

HISTORY OF THE 50TH REGIMENT NORTH CAROLINA TROOPS (taken from North Carolina Troops 1861-1865, A Roster)-1862 -The 50th Regiment N.C. Troops was organized at Camp Mangum, near Raleigh, on or about April 15th, 1862, and was composed of men recruited primarily in the counties of Harnett, Johnston, Moore, Person, Robeson, Rutherford, and Wayne. Its first colonel was Marshall D. Craton, a Wayne County physician who had served previously as lieutenant colonel of the 35th Regiment N.C. Troops. At Camp Mangum the men were issued “Confederate Pikes” and spent the next six weeks, according to Lieutenant G. W. Watson of Company C, performing “drill-drill-drill-Squad drill-Officer’s drill-Company drill- and Battalion drill . . .“Confederate Pikes” as described by Private Kinchen Jahu Carpenter of Co. I, 50th NC, “consisted of a wooden handle about 10 feet long, at one end of which a dirk-shaped spear was securely fastened, and attached to this spear; at the shank or socket, was another steel blade in the form of a brier-hook, in order, as the boys said, that they could get them ‘a going and a coming.’ ”On May 31, 1862, the regiment departed by rail for Weldon, in Halifax County near the Virginia border, where it arrived the next morning. It then crossed the Roanoke River to Garysburg, three miles beyond. There it was issued muskets and assigned, along with the 43rd and 45th N.C. Regiments, to a brigade commanded by Junius Daniel of the 45th Regiment.The 50th remained at Garysburg for almost three weeks, “drilling hard” and standing guard over the Roanoke River railroad bridge. On June 19 the brigade departed for Petersburg, VA, where it was assigned to the division of Major General Theophilus H. Holmes. It was then moved to a defensive position just north of the city at Drewy’s Bluff, on the south bank of the James River.During the Seven Days’ Battles east of Richmond, June 25-July 1, 1862, Daniel’s Brigade was stationed on the extreme right flank of the Confederate army and saw relatively little action. On June 29 the brigade crossed over to the north bank of the James on a pontoon bridge. After spending a rainy night without tents the men were subjected the next day, in the words of Lieutenant Watson, to a “most terrifick” fire from Federal batteries and gunboats, which rained shells down “like hail” upon the untried Confederates. According to Colonel Daniel’s report, a “stampede” of the cavalry and artillery ensued during which the 50th and 43rd regiments became ‘slightly confused.’ That incident, which was not without humorous overtones, was reported by Lieutenant J.C. Ellington of Company C as follows:“The scene was awe-inspiring, especially to raw troops who were under fire for the first time. Such a baptism of fire . . . has very rarely been experienced in the history of war. There was a slight depression in the road-way, and across the open space occupied the 50th Regiment was a plank fence. We were ordered to lie down behind this fence for such protection as it and the embankment on the road side might afford. About this time a squadron of cavalry . . . was stampeded by the explosion of a shell in their ranks, and in their wild flight rushed their horses against the plank fence which, like a dead-fall, caught many of our men who were held down . . . until we could throw down the rail fence on the opposite side of the road and allow them to escape, which they were not slow to do. In the confusion incident to this affair . . . the color bearer of the 50th Regiment escaped to the open field to the right of the road and planted the colors in full view of the fleet on the river, thereby concentrating their fire on our part of the line. It was some time before he was noticed standing solitary and alone in the open field, grasping his flag staff, which was firmly planted in the ground, as if bidding defiance to the whole Union army and navy, and the rest of mankind.”For the shaken novices of the 50th Regiment, the day’s misadventures were unfortunately not yet at an end. Shortly after “order had been restored,” Captain T. H. Brem’s battery was sent forward t reinforce a group of beleaguered Confederate artillerymen who were attempting to suppress the Federal cannoneers. A few moments later the 50th Regiment was ordered to the support of the artillery but was promptly run down by Brem’s Battery “in wild flight . . .knocking down and running over many of our men with their horses and guns.” When a succession of thunderous explosions nearby announced th a Federal battery was on their flank and had opened fire at short range, the men of the 50th retreated, apparently with noticeable enthusiasm, to the cover of a woods. Somewhat later they returned to their original position in the road, where they “remained steady” for the balance of the evening. Considering that the men of his brigade were “all new”, Daniel thought that they had “behaved well.” Seven members of the 50th were wounded, two of them mortally.During the evening of July 1, 1862 the regiment returned to its campground of the night of June 29. There it remained in line of battle for “12 to 15 hours in a drenching rain.” On July 3 the frazzled men, suffering severy from hunger, thirst, and fatigue, slogged their way through “very, very deep mud” to their former position at Drewry’s Bluff. Daniel’s men remained at Drewry’s Bluff constructing entrenchments and fortifications for most of the next two months. During that time the Army of Northern Virginia was reorganized, and two new regiments - the 32nd and 53rd North Carolina were assigned to Daniel’s Brigade. On July 31 and August 1 the brigade took part in a movement to Merchant’s Hope Church to support a forty-cannon bombardment of the Federal base at Harrison’s Landing, on the James River. The Confederate artillerists, under orders to fire the twenty or thirty rounds with which they were supplied “as rapidly as possible, hitch up and retire”, created an “indescribable . . . consternation” among the Federals and caused some damage to their shipping but inflicted few casualties. The men then returned to Drewry’s Bluff. On August 29th, 1862 Daniel’s Brigade was ordered to Richmond. Several days later it moved to Proctor’s Creek, three miles down the James River from Drewry’s Bluff. There the men resumed “throwing up fortifications . . . We have the Country fortified for some miles around Drewry’s Bluff [Lieutenant Watson wrote] - so that, when Mr. Lincoln’s men endeavor to get to Richmond by this route - they will have a hard road to travel.”The 50th Regiment remained in the vicinity of Drewry’s Bluff during the Sharpsburg campaign and for the remainder of 1862. Colonel Craton resigned on November 25 because of a physical disability and was replaced by James A. Washington, a Goldsboro merchant who was serving at the time as lieutenant colonel of the regiment.“In December [reported Lieutenant Ellington] we constructed comfortable log cabins in which to spend the winter. We completed them in time to move in just a few days before Christmas. We enjoyed a jolly Christmas and congratulated ourselves on being comfortably housed for the winter, but on the last day of December the brigade received ‘marching orders’ and on January 1, 1863, we started by rail for North Carolina.”- 1863 -The Regiment arrived at Goldsboro, N.C. on January 3rd, 1863. On February 3rd, it departed in a heavy snowstorm for Kinston, which it reached on February 7.In March 1863, the 50th Regiment along with the rest of Daniel’s Brigade took part in Major General D.H. Hill’s (of Sharpsburg fame) attempt to recapture New Bern and Washington, North Carolina. Hill planned a three-column attack on New Bern in which one column, under Daniel, was to move directly against the town along the north side of the Trent River while two flanking columns, commanded by Brigadier Generals James J. Pettigrew (of Gettysburg fame) and Beverly H. Robertson, advanced respectively down the north bank of the Neuse River and the south bank of the Trent. Pettigrew’s orders were to bombard Fort Anderson and shell Federal gunboats on the Neuse, and Robertson’s cavalrymen were to tear up the track of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad.On March 13th Daniel’s force encountered Federal pickets about ten miles southeast of New Bern. Driving the pickets before them, the Confederates soon came upon a lightly defended enemy line at Deep Gully, a small stream that flowed into the Trent. An artillery bombardment and an attack by four companies of the 50th Regiment speedily drove the Federals from their works, which the Confederates occupied for the night. New fighting broke out the next morning as the reinforced Federal defenders attempted unsuccessfully to recapture their position at Deep Gully. The Federals then retired to their main defenses at New Bern. Pettigrew, in the meantime, had been thwarted in his assignment by enemy gunboats, swampy terrain, and the inadequacy of his artillery. Unable to shell Fort Anderson into submission and unwilling to risk a problematical and costly infantry assault on a narrow front, he withdrew.Hill then abandoned his campaign against New Bern and, after returning briefly to Kinston, marched with his reunited force against “Little Washington.” Hoping to prevent the arrival of Federal reinforcements by the Pamlico River, Hill positioned batteries at key points around the town and attempted to block the river with sunken hulks and pilings cut off below the waterline. Daniel’s and Pettigrew’s brigades were stationed east of the town to engage any Federal relief force that might advance from New Bern. Limited by an inadequate supply of artillery ammunition and prohibited by orders from attempting to capture Washington (NC) by storm, Hill began a sparodic shelling and settled down to starve the Unionists into submission. For its part the Federal garrison, which possessed adequate numbers, weapons, and munitions but was already on short rations, returned the Confederate battery fire and prepared for what it hoped would be a brief siege. One unlettered North Carolina soldier described the situation as follows:“We are in three miles of Washington (NC). We expect to march evrry day on the enemy. We have bin a canonading every day fore the last weak[.] They try to run up the river with their gun boats, but we beat them back. We have got the river Blockadded[.] We have got the sity serrounded so they can’t reinforce . . . Our army is in site of the sitty. Our Picket guard is in fifty yards of none another. But they ar not aloud to shoot at none another. The citisson has ris white flags all in the sity and evy house.”On April 9th the 50th Regiment, temporarily attached to Pettigrew’s Brigade, took part in the bloodless repulse of a Federal relief column at Blount’s Creek, downstream from Washington on the Pamlico River. That small victory was negated on the evening of April 13th when the Federal steamer Escort, her decks piled with hay bales to protect her from artillery fire, ran the Confederate gauntlet, bringing supplies and the 5th Regiment Rhode Island Infantry. Two days later the Escort sailed blithely past the Confederate batteries on her return trip, this time in broad daylight. General Hill, convinced that Washington could not be taken, raised the siege on April 16th and retired to Greenville. After an all-night march on the 17th over roads described by one officer of the 50th Regiment as “the worst I ever saw,” the weary Confederates reached Greenville the next day.Daniel’s Brigade remained at Greenville until May 1st, when it was ordered to Kinston. On May 7th the brigade was sent to Core Creek, on the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad a few miles southeast of Kinston, where it tore up several miles of track. When the other four regiments of Daniel’s brigade were transferred to Virginia on or about May 17, 1863, the 50th Regiment remained behind at Kinston. The regiment was transferred shortly thereafter to the brigade of Brigadier General James Martin. Although theoretically composed of three regiments - the others being the 17th NC Regiment and the 42nd NC Regiment, Martin’s Brigade was in fact an administrative unit, and the three regiments continued to operate independently in North Carolina. During the remainder of May, all of June, and the first half of July, the 50th Regiment made repeated incursions into enemy territory around New Bern, capturing “a number” of pickets and scouts. On July 17 Brigadier General Edward E. Potter led a large force of Federal cavalrymen out of New Bern on a six day raid that resulted in the destruction of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad bridge over the Tar River at Rocky Mount and the burning of bridges at Greenville and Tarboro. Two steamboats and an ironclad were also destroyed along with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of military supplies and other property. The 50th Regiment, operating out of Kinston, made a valiant effort to intercept the raiders and succeeded in delaying their retreat on July 20 and 21. Utilizing their mobility to good effect, the main body of Federals eluded the North Carolina infantrymen on the morning of July 22 and, hotly pursued by such cavalry as the Confederates had in hand, made their escape to New Bern. However, the rear guard of the Federal column, composed of Negro cavalrymen and contrabands was intercepted by the 50th Regiment at a bridge over a creek near the “Burney Place” in Craven County.“We opened fire on the column with a small brass cannon [Lieutenant Ellington reported] . . . This utterly demoralized the ‘contrabands’ who, in their mad rush to keep pace with their erstwhile deliverers . . . who were now fleeing for their lives, failed to discover (see) us. The shock was so sudden and unexpected that the effect was indescribable. The great cavalcade, composed of men, women and children, perched on wagons, carts, buggies, carriages, and mounted on horses and mules, whipping, slashing and yelling like wild Indians, was suddenly halted by our fire upon the bridge . . . one Captain, who was driving a pair of spirited iron-gray horses, attempted to rush past three of our men who were lying in the yard and was shot dead as he stood up in the buggy firing at them. Many others were either killed or wounded in attempting to escape through the woods near by. In the excitement and confusion which ensued many of the vehicles were upset . . . and many others wrecked by the frightened horses.”At about 8 o’clock the 50th Regiment set off in pursuit of Potter.“For miles the road and woods on either side were strewn with all kinds of wearing apparel, table ware, such as fine china and silver ware, blankets, fine bed quilts and all sorts of ladies’ wearing apparel . . . The few men of Colonel J.T. Kennedy’s Cavalry and such as we were able to mount from time to time with the abandoned horses, kept up a running fight with the rear of the retreating column from the “Burney Place” to Street’s Ferry.”Colonel Washington was censured for his conduct during the Potter Raid and shortly thereafter submitted his resignation. Lieutenant Colonel George Wortham, a Granville County lawyer in civilian life, was promoted to colonel and placed in command of the 50th Regiment.On August 9, 1863 the 50th was ordered to Wilmington, NC, where it went into camp at Virginia Creek. The regiment remained in and around Wilmington until the spring of 1864.- 1864 -The 50th Regiment constructed fortifications, did picket duty along the coast, and performed provost duties in and around Wilmington during the Fall of 1863 and winter of 1863-64. Except for an occasional shelling by enemy warships, the regiment enjoyed a quiet period. One of the more interesting diversions occurred on March 24 when “a lieutenant of energy and determination and twenty picked men” were sent up the railroad to Bladenboro to “suppress” a “mob of low women” and deserters who were “attempting” to plunder Government freight trains. The outcome of the expedition is unknown.On April 27th, 1864, the 50th Regiment was ordered to Rocky Mount (NC). From there it moved to Tarboro and on April 29th, to Plymouth, which had just been recaptured, along with “Little Washington” by Confederate forces. Five companies of the regiment were stationed as a garrison at Plymouth and the other five companies at Washington. For the next six months the regiment performed garrison duty and was sent on raids into coastal counties between New Bern and the Virginia line to collect provisions for the Army of Northern Virginia. Those raids, generally undertaken by small detachments, resulted in the seizure of valuable supplies and the capture of a considerable number of prisoners. Skirmishes occurred frequently but with few casualties on either side. On September 1st, six companies of the regiment were reported at Plymouth and four at Wilmington. On October 23rd the entire regiment was sent to Tarboro; it remained at Tarboro and its vicinity for the next month.Sherman’s MarchOn November 24, 1864, about a week after the start of General Sherman’s march from Atlanta to the sea, the 50th Regiment was transferred by rail to Augusta, GA. Upon arriving there three days later the Regiment was ordered to Savannah; however, it was halted near Grahamville, South Carolina, about twenty-seven miles north of Savannah, where an enemy force was advancing against the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. A Federal lodgment on the railroad would make it virtually impossible for the Confederates to hold Savannah and would make evacuation of the city more difficult. After arriving at Honey Hill too late to take part in the successful defense of the railroad, the 50th Regiment resumed its journey to Savannah, which it reached on December 2nd, 1864. It was then assigned, along with the 10th Battalion N.C. Heavy Artillery, to Brigadier General Lawrence Baker’s brigade of Major General Lafayette McLaws’s division and was ordered to Forty-five Mile Station on the Georgia Central Railroad. There it fought a delaying action against Sherman’s advancing vanguard at the Ogeechee River bridge on December 9th and fell back to Savannah.Although protected by a gauntlet of rivers, swamps, rice fields, and fortifications, Savannah’s defenders, variously estimated between 10,000 and 18,000 men, were hopelessly outnumbered by Sherman’s 62,000 man army. On December 20th the Confederate commander, Lieutenant General William J. Hardee, perceiving that he was about to be inextricably trapped, ordered the ships and docks in the harbor blown up and the city evacuated. Lit by the stygian glare of large waterfront fires, “an immense funeral procession” of soldiers and civilians escaped that night over a hastily improvised pontoon bridge.The Confederates fell back initially to Hardeeville, about fourteen miles north of Savannah on the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. General Baker was relieved from duty about this time because of disability from wounds and was replaced s brigade commander by Colonel Washington M. Hardy of the 60th Regiment N.C. Troops. A new regiment, the 77th Regiment N.C. Troops, was also assigned to the brigade. On December 26th the retreat resumed, and the 50th Regiment moved up the railroad another thirty miles to Pocotaligo.- 1865 -At Pocotaligo, on January 14, 1865, a sudden advance by the Federals nearly cut off the regiment from its only line of retreat. A fighting withdrawal ensued, and the regiment succeeded with difficulty in extricating itself. It then fell back with the rest of McLaws’s division to the Salkehatchie River, where a new defensive line was established. On January 20th, near River’s Bridge, Company I of the 50th and a Georgia unit, which were on independent scouting missions, exchanged gunfire after blundering into each other along the foggy, flooded banks of the Salkehatchie and suffered moderate casualties.Two weeks later, on February 3rd, the Salkehatchie line was broken by the Federals. The 50th Regiment, after another narrow escape through the swamps at Buford’s Bridge, withdrew about forty miles north to Branchville, where it rejoined McLaws’s force. A new line at the Edisto River was turned by the Federals a few weeks later. The 50th Regiment then retreated to Florence, which it reached on February 25th. The regiment and its sister units in Hardy’s Brigade, still moving north, crossed the Pee Dee River near Cheraw on March 3rd and withdrew to Fayetteville, NC, which fell in its turn before the relentless Federal juggernaut on March 11th. Sherman’s army advanced northeast from Fayetteville on March 14th in two columns commanded respectively by Major General Henry Slocum, who feinted in the direction of Raleigh, and Major General Oliver Howard, who moved against Goldsboro to link up with the victorious Federal forces marching westward from the North Carolina coast. Hoping to draw Sherman’s two columns farther apart and defeat them separately, Lieutenant General Joseph E. Johnston ordered Hardee to fight a delaying action against Slocum. By March 16th Hardee’s meager, tatterdemalion force of 6,000 men, nearing the end of its rope after retreating, in the words of a South Carolina soldier, for “hundreds of miles, mainly on foot and in haste, through rain, mud, and water, without tents and on scant rations,” was in line on a ridge near the Harnett County town of Averasboro.Although Hardee was in a strong position with his flanks somewhat protected by a swamp and a small river, Slocum enjoyed a numerical advantage of four or five to one. A frontal attack in combination with a move to turn the Confederate right flank drove Hardee’s men from two defensive lines before the Federals were precariously halted at a third line until dark. During the night the men received orders to build fires as if going into camp and then “get down, stooping, or on ‘all fours’, to withdraw, not speaking above a whisper.” While the bullets of Federal sharpshooters plinked bark and needles from the pine trees, Hardee’s troops fell back.“We plodded all night March 16 (Thursday), all day on Friday, camped on Friday night in the piney woods, and then went on to a place called Elevation [in Johnston County] by noon on Saturday. There we remained until early SUnday, March 19, when we were moved by rapid tramping on to Bentonville . . . From Thursday till midday Saturday, we were without any rations save a very small slice of raw bacon to each man. Our entire march from Charleston, S.C. to Greensboro, N.C., was hard; but the tramp from Averasboro to Elevation was about the worst we had in the whole stretch . . .” During the Battle of Averasboro, Hardee lost approximately 500 men killed, wounded, captured and missing. Loses in the 50th Regiment were not reported. - The Battle of Bentonville -Having marshaled most of his available forces and accomplished his goal of increasing the distance between Slocum and Howard, Johnston laid an ambush for Slocum at Bentonville on March 19th. Cleverly deploying his 19,000 man army in a woods behind a screen of cavalry, Johnston awaited the arrival of the strung-out, 26,000 man Federal column. Slocum, thinking he was confronted by the usual token cavalry opposition, saw no reason to wait for his entire command to come up and ordered a division forward to clear his front. That unsuspecting unit received “an awful volley” from massed Confederate infantry at a distance of about fifty feet. A savage, hand-to-hand fight with clubbed muskets and ramrods ensued, and the Federals fell back in disarray. Rebounding quickly, Slocum’s men came on again, concentrating their attack on troops under Lieutenant General Braxton Bragg on the Confederate left. Confederate infantry under Hardee and Lieutenant General A.P. Stewart then charged out of the brush and blackjack thickets in a devastating assault that crushed the undermanned and disorganized Federal left and precipitated, in the words of one candid Federal, “some of the best running I ever did.” The Federal right wing then came under attack from the rear by Hardee and Stewart; shortly thereafter, units under the command of Bragg pitched into the beleaguered Federals from the front. Battling desperately amid a “continuous and remorseless roar of musketry”, the Federal defenders narrowly succeeded in holding their position until reinforcements arrived to beat back the Confederate assault. The fighting then shifted again to the re-formed and reinforced Federal left, where five successive Confederate attacks were smashed by a “raging leaden hailstorm of grape and canister.”McLaws’s Division, of which the 50th Regiment was still a part, arrived late on the battlefield and, instead of taking part in the assault of Hardee and Stewart as planned, was diverted unnecessarily to the Confederate left at the request of Bragg. Having received “no particular instructions”, it remained in reserve during Bragg’s attack. That evening (night) Hardy’s men, thinking they were going to the relief of another unit, were double-quicked to the Confederate right. There, according to Lieutenant John G. Albright of the 77th North Carolina, they were mistakenly “rushed . . . up within twenty feet of the enemy’s breastworks.” where they received a “terrible volley.”“We took shelter the best we could behind the pine trees, except some of us who were in a pond about sixty or seventy yards wide. These retreated across the pond, the officers shouting all the time, ‘You are shooting your own men!’’After a Confederate officer who was sent forward to investigate was captured by a Federal vedette, thereby firmly establishing the identity and hostile intentions of the soldiers manning the entrenchments, Hardy’s men opened fire and, Albright improbably claimed, drove the enemy from their works. Loses in the 77th Regiment, according to Albright, were “fifty-one men in about half a minute.” The 50th Regiment’s losses were calculated by Lieutenant Ellington to be be “about one-third” of the men engaged. Although that figure may well be exaggerated, the probability that the regiment suffered heavily during the “close” and “bloody” fighting on the evening of March 19th seems high.During the night Sherman, who was with Howard’s wing of the Federal army, belatedly learned of the fighting at Bentonville. Preparations to go to the aid of Slocum began immediately, and by the afternoon of the 29th the army was reunited on the battlefield. Johnston, realizing that his gambit had failed, reluctantly remained at Bentonville in order to cover the evacuation of his wounded, an undertaking that, because of poor roads and a shortage of wagons, would require two days. Confronted now by a force twice the size of the one he had faced on the previous day, Johnston realigned his units in a configuration similar to a spraddled horseshoe. While ambulances rumbled over the Mill Creek Bridge, in Johnston’s immediate rear and his only line of retreat, the Confederate general resupplied his men as best he could and awaited developments. McLaws's division, including the 50th North Carolina Regiment, was moved once again, this time to the extreme left of the Confederate line, where it faced some of Howard’s newly arrived units. General Sherman, for his part, had no more interest than Johnston in renewing the contest. Rarely inclined to expend lives in costly attacks if maneuver would accomplish his object, his primary concern for the moment was to reach the Goldsboro railroad. There he would be reinforced by powerful Federal units from the North Carolina coast and would obtain much needed supplies and equipment. Except for a sharp skirmish on the Confederate left involving units under the command of Major General Robert F. Hoke, the day passed without serious fighting.The next day, March 21, 1865, Johnston continued to evacuate his wounded and remained in his works. Heavy skirmishing took place all along the line, but the only action of consequence was an unauthorized Federal attack by Major General Joseph A. Mower that broke through on the Confederate left and threatened to capture the vital bridge over Mill Creek. Against that penetration Johnston mustered just enough resistance to force the impetuous Federal general to pause and call for reinforcements, whereupon he was ordered by Sherman to withdraw.Johnston fell back in the direction of Smithfield that night. Casualties sustained by the 50th Regiment in the three-day Battle of Bentonville were not officially reported but were probably heavy. McLaws’s Division as a whole lost 28 men killed, 153 wounded, and 22 missing.At Smithfield the Confederates enjoyed a brief respite. Johnston’s army was reorganized, and the 50th Regiment and the 10th Battalion were assigned to Brigadier General William W. Kirkland’s brigade of Hoke’s Division. Other units in the brigade were the 17th Regiment N.C. Troops and the 42nd and 66th Regiments N.C. Troops.On April 10th, 1865, Sherman’s inexorable advance resumed. Smithfield was captured on April 11th, and Raleigh was occupied two days later. Johnston retreated with his small and, particularly after the surrender of General Lee on April 9th, rapidly shrinking army to the vicinity of Durham Station. There, with the authorization of President Jefferson Davis, a fugitive from the fallen Confederate capital, he opened negotiations with Sherman on April 17th. Johnston surrendered at the Bennitt House, three miles west of Durham Station, on April 26th, 1865. A week later, at Greensboro, NC, the army was paroled. The number of members of the 50th Regiment who were present was not reported.After years of war and honorable service, the survivors of the 50th North Carolina returned to their homes and did their duty to rebuild a reunited nation.----------------Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain- (Union General who accepted the Confederate surrender at Appomattox...)...On they come, with the old swinging route step and swaying battle flags. In the van, the proud Confederate ensign. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood; men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond; was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word, nor whisper or vain-glorying, nor motion of man, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!------------ Sam Watkins-1st Tennessee Infantry-Quoted late in his life . . . America has no north, no south, no east, no west. The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south. We are one and undivided. ----------