In response to the very first call, nay, indeed, before any call, upon the passage of the Ordinance of Secession in January, the Fairfield volunteers under Captain J. B. Davis at once offered their services, and were accepted by Colonel Maxcy Gregg as one of his original regiment, organized under the ordinance of that Convention. With Gregg's regiment the company served on Morris' Island during the winter and spring of 1861, and was present at the battle of Fort Sumter. From Fort Sumter it went with Gregg to Virginia as a part of the Veterans from Sumter, and was engaged under him at the small affair in Virginia on the Alexandria line.

Upon the reorganization of that regiment, Captain J. B. Davis' company was transferred to the Fifteenth regiment, in which it served throughout the war. Captain Davis became colonel upon Colonel DeSaussure's death at Gettysburg, and the regiment, under his command, served in Kershaw's brigade throughout the Tennessee campaign, and from the Wilderness to the surrender.

The General Assembly, on the 17th December, 1860, passed an act providing for an armed military force of ten regiments, to be organized into a division of two or more brigades. One of these regiments, the Sixth, was raised from the counties of Chester and Fairfield. The officers were Colonel James H. Rion, Lieutenant-Colonel A. J. Secrest and Major Thomas W. Woodward.

The companies from Fairfield were: Fairfield Fencibles, Captain John Bratton; Boyd Guards, Captain J. N. Shedd; Little Run Guards, Captain J. M. Brice; Buck Head Guards, Captain E. J. Means; Cedar Creek Rifles, Captain J. R. Harrison.

The companies from Chester were: Chester Blues, Captain E. C. McLure; Captain G. L. Strait's company, Captain J. A. Walker's company, Captain O. Harden's company, and Captain J. Mike Brown's company.

Colonel Rion resigned in June, 1861, and the regiment went to Virginia under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Secrest. Upon the application of the regiment, Colonel Charles S. Winder (who afterwards became brigadier-general and was killed at Cedar Run on the 9th August, 1862, while commanding the Stonewall Brigade under Jackson,) was assigned to the command and did much to perfect its organization. But it was under Lieutenant-Colonel Secrest, who had been a distinguished officer of the Palmetto regiment in Mexico, that the regiment was to make its first fight and win its first laurels. Though the Sixth was not in time to take part in the First Manassas, it was to be the next regiment from this State to be able to style itself veteran. It was engaged in the battle of Dranesville on the 20th December, 1861, under General J. E. B. Stuart, afterwards our great cavalry leader, and this is his report of its conduct:

The Sixth South Carolina and the First Kentucky were, I regret to say, too much screened from my view to afford me the privilege of bearing witness by personal observation of individual prowess; but that the Sixth South Carolina under the fearless Secrest did its whole duty, let the list of killed and wounded and her battle-flag bathed in blood, with the staff shivered in the hands of the bearer, be silent but eloquent witness. Their Major (Woodward) was painfully wounded, but bore himself heroically notwithstanding.

The regiment lost in this, its first, battle eighteen killed and forty-five wounded—sixty-three.

Upon the reorganization of the regiment in the spring of 1862, John Bratton was elected Colonel; James M. Steadman, Lieutenant-Colonel, and Edward C. McLure, Major.

Colonel Bratton had come, as we have seen, from an heroic family, and well did he maintain the reputation his ancestors had established for natural military talent and personal gallantry. It has been the custom to point to General Bratton as a conspicuous instance of the singular adaptability, if not genius, of Southern men for military command. A quiet country gentleman and planter, without the slightest military education or experience, who in all probability had never seen a regiment manoeuvered or a thousand men in ranks, goes into the war as a captain, soon becomes colonel and then general, and fills each position with ease and honor to himself, and satisfaction to those above him and with the affection of those under him. But as we have seen, my comrades, this military talent did not exhibit itself for the first time in the Bratton family when the colonel of the Sixth distinguished himself, not only in the command of a regiment, but as well in command of a brigade, and added the brigadier's wreath to the colonel's stars. He had inherited military ability as well as courage. He was but exhibiting the same talent with which his ancestor, Colonel Bratton of the Revolution, planned and successfully carried out the attack upon the British Captain Houk at the Williamson residence in 1780. Worthy son of heroic sire, it was indeed your fortune, survivors of the Sixth, to have been led by so gallant and able an officer and so pure and true a citizen.

The Sixth was next engaged at the battle of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862. General Bratton, in an account published in the Southern Historical Society Papers, which he wrote in 1868, after all his great experience on so many battlefields during the rest of the war, writes of his old regiment on that occasion: I have never on any field during the war seen more splendid gallantry exhibited than on that field of Williamsburg. He adds, This was the first and last time I ever asked for a place in a charge—a pardonable folly I hope at that stage of the war.

Vol. XIII, Southern Historical Society Papers, p. 119.

Then came the battle of Seven Pines, in which the Sixth was again conspicuously engaged and in which it suffered so terribly. Colonel Bratton himself was severely wounded and fell into the hands of the enemy.

The blood of other Revolutionary stock was poured out in this battle in the ranks of the Sixth. Upon the reorganization of the regiment, Joseph Lucien Gaston had been elected captain of the Chester Blues. A younger brother and himself were killed in a few feet of each other at Seven Pines. We have seen how Esther Gaston and her sister had nursed the wounded at Bufort's massacre and at Hanging Rock. These gallant sons of her family died on the field before such tender ministrations could be made to them.

Captain Gaston was a man of the highest order and the most scrupulous integrity. His mind was strong and well balanced. He was highly cultivated. How could he be otherwise, coming from a family which even in the midst of the Revolution had not failed to teach the youth around them. He was a young lawyer of great promise, and had the fairest prospects of attaining the highest honor of his profession. His aged relative and partner has often been heard to say that Mr. Gaston was the best man he ever knew, and came as near perfection as poor human nature can attain to. He was a hero indeed. For he was one of those who was not carried into the war by the rushing tide of enthusiasm; he was one of those true martyrs to our cause, who conscientiously and decidedly opposed to secession, yet, when the State in her sovereignty had acted, did not hesitate to obey her, but was amongst the very first to step to the front in her defence. To such men, what meed of praise can we award adequate to their self-sacrifice?

There fell, too, in this battle Captains Phinney, W. B. Lyles and J. W. Walker; and Sergeant-Major Beverly W. Means, Librarian of the South Carolina College, was mortally wounded.

Then followed the battles around Richmond, the Second Manassas and the Pennsylvania campaign, in all which this regiment bore its part with its accustomed gallantry. Then your winter of 1862-‘63 at the Blackwater, thereby missing Chancellorsville; then your return to the Army of Northern Virginia, the Pennsylvania campaign and the battle of Gettysburg, and your transfer with Longstreet's corps to the Army of Tennessee.

On the 28th October, 1863, you were in the battle of Lookout Mountain, where Bratton commanded Jenkins' brigade, before it became his own; then the Knoxville campaign and siege, and your return to Virginia; then you took part in that wonderful campaign from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, in which, from the 5th of May to 30th June, the armies of the Potomac and of the James under Grant lost a greater number than there were men in the Army of Northern Virginia under Lee; and then the long siege of Petersburg, ending with Appomattox.

General Bratton made a report on the 1st of January, 1864, of the operations of his brigade from the Wilderness to that date, which comprises the history of its active operations while under his command. He concludes with a statement, that out of 2,016 present at the beginning of the campaign, your losses during it were 1,688, including many of the noblest and best in your ranks. Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. VIII, p. 547.

In the summer of 1861, the Confederate Government called upon the State of South Carolina for six regiments of volunteers for the war; that is, for the whole war. The regiments which were accepted under this call were Gregg's old First Regiment (reorganized), Orr's First Rifles, the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth regiments. Gregg's brigade was constituted of the first five of these. The Fifteenth regiment was added to Kershaw's brigade.

Of these, the Twelfth regiment was composed, with the exception, I believe, of two companies from Oconee, of companies raised from York, Lancaster, Kershaw, and Fairfield. From Fairfield there were two companies, Company C, Captain H. C. Davis, and Company F, Captain Hayne McMeekin.

The regiment was organized by the election of Colonel R. G. M. Dunnovant, of Chester, as Colonel; Dixon Barnes, of Lancaster, as Lieutenant-Colonel; and Cadwalader Jones, of York, as Major. Colonel Dunnovant had been Lieutenant-Colonel of the Palmetto regiment in Mexico.

The Twelfth, with the Thirteenth and Fourteenth, commenced its service on the coast, and was present at the bombardment of Hilton Head, but was not actively engaged. In April, 1862, it was ordered to Virginia with the Thirteenth and Fourteenth, then constituting Gregg's brigade, and proceeded to Milford Station, where it formed a part of what was known as the Army of the Rappahannock under General Joseph R. Anderson. This was an army of observation of McDowell's force at Fredericksburg, which was intended to cooperate with McClellan by an advance upon Richmond from the north. This plan Jackson frustrated by his victories in the Valley, and in the last of May the Army of the Rappahannock fell back to Richmond. On reaching Richmond, Major-General A. P. Hill was assigned to its command, and the Army of the Rappahannock became, what I trust it is not immodest for those of us whose fortune it was to serve in its ranks to say, the famous Light Division. The division was moved out to take part in the great battle of Seven Pines on the 31st May, 1862, but was not actually engaged. The first actual engagement of the Twelfth was in the Seven Days battles around Richmond. It was the fortune of the First, which had (with Orr's rifles) joined Gregg's brigade just before those battles, and the Twelfth to commence together the battle of Cold Harbor on the 27th June, 1862; and from that time to the close of the war there was a feeling of mutual confidence and regard between these two regiments, which was increased as the exigencies of the service again and again threw them together in the most desperate conflicts. The loss of the brigade in this battle was 854 out of about 2,500 men carried into action. In the Twelfth, Lieutenant J. W. DeLancy was killed and Captains Bookter, Miller, McMeekin and Vorlandigham were wounded. The loss of the regiment was 138— 17 killed and 121 wounded. At Frazier's Farm on the 30th the regiment lost seven wounded. The brigade was not engaged at Malvern Hill. Its losses in these battles was altogether 971 out of the 2,500 with which it commenced them.

Then followed the great battle of the war of Gregg's brigade, the second day of the Second Manassas, in which the most of the fighting on the Confederate side was done by this brigade, and of which a Northern military writer describing this battle has said: In Southern histories and by Southern firesides the brave deeds that Southern soldiers had on this day achieved were to mark it as the bloody and glorious day of the 29th August. In this battle Colonel Dixon Barnes greatly distinguished himself. It was the Twelfth which drove out the New England brigade, which, under Grover, had penetrated our lines by a charge second only to that of Pickett's division at Gettysburg. In this battle the brigade had nine out of eleven field-officers killed and wounded, and 619 out of 1,500 men carried into action. Colonel Barnes and Major McCorkle were among the wounded. The Twelfth regiment lost 145—killed, 24, and wounded, 121. A few evenings after, at Ox Hill, its adjutant, W. C. Buchanan, was killed and eleven men wounded.

In an address delivered by me before the survivors of the Twelfth regiment at Walhalla, S. C., on Gregg's brigade at Manassas (see Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. XIII, p. 1), it is stated that the First South Carolina volunteers was guided into the action by Lieutenant Fellows, of the Thirteenth. I am assured by Captain J. A. Hinnant, of the Twelfth, that the statement is a mistake, that it was he who did so, and I make this correction at his request.—E. McC., Jr.

Then followed the capture of Harper's Ferry and the battle of Sharpsburg, in which the Twelfth sustained the irreparable loss of Colonel Barnes, and in which Captains J. L. Miller and H. C. Davis and Lieutenant R. M. Kerr were wounded. The Twelfth lost 102 of the 163 killed and wounded in the whole brigade. It was more fortunate at Shepherdstown, in which it had but one wounded, and scarcely less so at Fredericksburg, where it lost but eight out of the 336 killed and wounded in the brigade. A most gallant young officer from Fairfield was, however, killed in the First, Captain T. H. Lyles, who commanded Co. B, from Newberry. The regiment had been commanded by Colonel Cadwalader Jones in these battles. He resigned after Fredericksburg and was succeeded by Colonel John L. Miller. Colonel Miller's first battle was Chancellorsville, which was followed by an incident worthy of note. The Twelfth, with but 340 guns, was put in charge of over 2,000 Federal prisoners and marched them safely through to Richmond without the loss of one of them. Then followed Gettysburg, in which the Twelfth lost 20 killed, 105 wounded, and 5 missing—among the killed was Lieutenant A. W. Prag, and in the wounded Captains J. A. Hinnant, J. M. Moody, Lieutenants J. R. Boyles, J. A. Watson, M. R. Sharp, A. W. Black, W. J. Stover and J. M. Jenkins. At Hagerstown and Falling Waters the regiment lost eighteen killed, wounded and missing.

Then came the great campaign of 1864, and in its first battle, the Wilderness, the Twelfth had another gallant colonel killed, Colonel John L. Miller, and with him fell Lieutenants J. L. McKnight and J. A. Gavin. Lieutenant-Colonel E. F. Bookter and Lieutenants J. A. Watson and J. A. Beard were wounded. There were sixteen killed, sixty-four wounded and five missing in this regiment. Then again the regiment suffered most heavily at Spotsylvania. It entered the Bloody Angle at the point of greatest danger—just at the break. They lost fearfully but fought nobly, 28 were killed, 38 wounded and 52 missing—118. Lieutenants J. B. Blackman and J. R. Faulkenburg were killed, and Captain W. J. Stover, Lieutenants Wade Reeves and W. B. White wounded. In the affairs from the 12th of May to 1st of July, 1864, the Twelfth lost 2 killed, 21 wounded and 11 missing—34. Major T. F. Clyburne and Lieutenant W. H. Rives were wounded. Lieutenant N. R. Bookter was killed before Petersburg. At Fussell's Mills the regiment lost 1 killed, 12 wounded and 5 missing—18.

At the battle of Jones' Farm, 30th September, 1864, the regiment lost its third colonel killed in battle-Colonel Edwin F. Bookter, of Richland. Mr. Caldwell, in his History of Gregg's Brigade, pays a glowing, but justly deserved, tribute to this noble officer. He had been severely wounded at Cold Harbor, 27th June, 1862, again seriously at Manassas, 29th August, 1862, and for a third time, and as it was supposed mortally, at the Wilderness, 5th May, 1864. He survived all these to die at the head of the regiment he loved so well and which loved him so well, in that brilliant, if small, affair. The regiment lost two killed, eighteen wounded and three missing. Among the wounded was Lieutenant Cadwalader Jones, of York.

Then followed the winter of 1864-‘65 in the trenches around Petersburg. The engagements on the 25th and 26th March, in which the Twelfth lost one killed and five missing. The fight at Gravelly Run on the 31st March, when General McGowan, with Gracie's Alabama brigade and ours, achieved so brilliant a success, and in which the regiment lost one killed and seventeen wounded; then Sunderland Station, in which a large part of the brigade was captured, including Captain R. M. Kerr, who commanded the Twelfth. Captain W. S. Dunlop, who had commanded the sharpshooters of the brigade after Captain W. T. Haskell's death at Gettysburg, and Lieutenant W. H. Rives were wounded and fell also into the hands of the enemy. And then the end at Appomattox!

In this regiment during the war there were 230 deaths from wounds, and wounds not mortal 652—making 862 wounds received. There were 414 deaths from disease, which added to the 230 deaths from wounds makes 644 deaths in the regiment. So that probably more than half of all who entered the regiment died during the war.

For these statistics see Caldwell's History of Gregg's and McGowan's Brigades.

The Seventeenth regiment, which was organized in the early part of 1862 (with the exception of but two companies from Barnwell), was composed entirely of men from York, Chester, Lancaster and Fairfield. These were: Three companies from York, Captains Meacham, Wilson and Whitingan; two companies from Chester, Captains Culp and Caskey, and two companies from Fairfield, Co. B, Captain W. P. Coleman and Co.—, Captain James Beatty. It was organized by the election of Governor John H. Means as Colonel, F. W. McMaster as Lieutenant-Colonel, and Julius Mills as Major, with Robert Stark Means as Adjutant.

This regiment's first service was on the coast of South Carolina, but it was to be its fortune, with the rest of its brigade, first under Evans, then under Elliot and then under Wallace, to serve in almost every State in the Confederacy. It belonged to what might be called, not disrespectfully, the tramp brigade. It saw service in South Carolina. It fought in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Mississippi. It traversed Alabama and Georgia, and served for some time on the Island of Hope, in the latter State, including in its service a term of bombardment in Fort Sumter. It might be said to have been ubiquitous.

Its first battle was the Second Manassas, and in this battle it lost in proportion to its numbers more than any other regiment from this State during the whole war did in any single engagement. There were but three other regiments in the Confederacy which had a greater percentage of loss in any single battle. Its loss was 189 killed and wounded out of 284 carried into action. But this loss, great and terrible in its numbers as it was, did not cover its calamity to the State. At the head of this regiment fell one of South Carolina's noblest citizens.

I have spoken of Captain Gaston, of the Sixth, who fell at Seven Pines, as a hero indeed, because he went into the service without hesitation upon the secession of the State, though he had been opposed to such action. Governor Means, on the contrary, had been earnest in its advocacy. He had been elected governor in 1850 on that issue, and he had constantly advocated secession. But when it came he was an elderly man, beyond the age even of reserve duty. With his age, too, his physique had become such as to unfit him for the field. The dignity of his position as an ex-governor of the State would seem to have excused him had his age and physical condition fitted him for active service. His family, too, were fully represented in the army. All these considerations might well have persuaded him that the proper sphere of action was at home where, by his countenance, he might have encouraged his people in their adversities and by his wisdom have aided them in their necessities. So he might have reasoned, if indeed he had felt himself called upon to reason at all, why he, a man advanced in life, should not go into the field. But so he did not reason. He reasoned, on the contrary, thus: I have been advocating secession all my life; by my conduct I have done much to bring it about; now it has come, age or not, I will myself go with them and share the dangers to which the boys have been brought by my advice. And go he did, noble man as he was.

In the very commencement of hostilities he hastened to Charleston and tendered his services as an aid to General Beauregard.

In the Seventeenth regiment he went into the field. A correspondent, writing to the Mercury of a visit to the regiment while it was on the coast, in April, 1862, thus speaks of his regiment: I have seen nowhere else an intermingling of discipline with a courtesy and kindness of manner to the men that approaches paternal tenderness. No doubt, the antecedents of the commander, Colonel John H. Means, contributes much to his success. But few men are so gifted in manner, not the spurious coin, but the genuine emanation from kindness and generosity of temper.

Is it any wonder that his men were not only proud of their colonel but loved him as a man? Nor was this feeling confined to his own regiment. It extended to the whole brigade. This is the account of his death written to the Mercury by an officer of another regiment:

Colonel Means, of the Seventeenth South Carolina volunteers, died this morning (September 1st) of a wound received in the battle of Manassas on the 30th August.

He fell in the thickest of the fight leading his regiment in a charge. The wound was severe, and as his gallant men pressed around him he said, Push on! My boys, push on!

Governor Means was beloved by all of Evans' brigade, and his regiment feels as if they had lost a father. He had particularly endeared himself to his brother officers. An abler pen than mine will do justice to his memory. He died quietly and perfectly resigned to his fate. No nobler or better man ever lived or died.

General Evans, in his report of the battle, says:

Among the killed were the gallant Colonel J. H. Means, of the Seventeenth regiment South Carolina volunteers, and Colonel J. M. Gadberry, of the Eighteenth. These brave men were shot down while nobly leading their regiments into action. Colonel Gadberry was killed instantly. Colonel Means (mortally wounded) survived two days. It is but justice to the memory of these noble and gallant officers to mention my appreciation of their valuable services. Colonel Means, though much advanced in years, ever exhibited the energy of youth in battling against our ruthless foe and devoting his whole ability to our sacred cause. His death fully exemplifies his devotion to his country.

Colonel McMaster, in his report, thus tells of his death:

Then the regiment was again marched forward in line of battle up a hill in the direction of the Chinn House in face of a terrific fire of the enemy, which was concentrated from two batteries, one on each side, and a regiment of infantry a short distance in front. Near this place our noble chief, Colonel Means, was mortally wounded and died two days after, lamented not only by every man in his command but by every good citizen of South Carolina.

The next engagement of the Seventeenth regiment was in Maryland, at Boonesboro, on the 14th September, in which out of 141 present the regiment lost sixty-one killed, wounded and missing. In this battle Lieutenant-Colonel R. Stark Means was shot through the thigh, and Colonel McMaster reports that he had detailed four men to bear him off, but that Colonel Means refused to allow them to make the effort as the enemy was in a short distance of him and still advancing. Colonel Means died from the effects of the wound. Thus the son soon followed his father. At Sharpsburg, on the 17th, this regiment had been reduced by casualties and marching to but fifty-nine present, including officers, rank and file and ambulance corps. Of this small number nineteen were killed and wounded.

After the Maryland campaign Evans' brigade was ordered to North Carolina, where, on the 14th of December—the day after the battle of Fredericksburg, in which the Sixth and Twelfth were engaged— the Seventeenth regiment fought in the battle of Kinston. Rebellion Records, Series 1, Vol. XVIII, p. 112. I can find no report of its losses.

From North Carolina the brigade was sent to reinforce Vicksburg, and reported to General Joseph E. Johnston at Jackson on the 3d June, Johnston's Narrative, p. 190. but did not reach Vicksburg. It was engaged in some skirmishing at Jackson, but nothing more. From Mississippi the brigade was ordered to the Isle of Hope, near Savannah, where it was encamped during the winter of 1863-‘64. From Savannah this regiment was sent to Charleston, where it furnished its details for the garrison at Fort Sumter, and thence it rejoined the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of 1864 under the command of General W. S. Walker.

Stephen Elliot, who had so nobly defended Fort Sumter and fought it to the water's edge, was appointed brigadier-general, and assigned to the command of this brigade. It was while under his command that the fearful battle of the Crater took place on the 3d July, 1864, in which, as Colonel McMaster justly observed in his address at Chester on the 13th August, 1879, it seldom falls to the lot of a regiment to act such a conspicuous part in saving an army as did the Seventeenth on that occasion. Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. X, p. 119.

Colonel McMaster is fully justified by General Humphreys, the distinguished Federal officer in that fair and admirable history of the Virginia campaign of 1864-‘65, published in the Scribner Series, in the estimate of the important services rendered by the Seventeenth regiment under his command on that terrible occasion. The Virginia Campaign 1864-‘65.—Humphreys, p. 256.

One-half of the regiment was lost at Fort Steadman on the 25th March, 1865. Colonel McMaster and twenty officers were captured. The remainder fought at Five Forks, where Lieutenant-Colonel Culp was captured. The three remaining officers of the regiment—Major Avery, Adjutant Fant and Captain Steele, of Lancaster—were each wounded on the day of the surrender.

Colonel Rion, as we have seen, went into the service first as colonel of the Sixth. He resigned this command in June, 1861, but he could not keep out of the service, and in 1862 he raised a company in Fairfield, and with Colonel P. H. Nelson, of Kershaw, formed a battalion, with Colonel Nelson as lieutenant-colonel and himself as major. With this battalion he served during the rest of the war. On the 14th July, 1863, he was complimented in general orders by General Beauregard for leading successfully an attack on Morris Island in which he was wounded by a bayonet. Going to Virginia with Hagood's brigade in the spring of 1864, on the 14th May, preceding the battle at Drury's Bluff, he drove back a line of battle with his skirmishers. He was wounded in the battle on the 16th May, but continued on the field during the whole day. At Petersburg, on 14th June, he again led, at night, a line of skirmishers of Hagood's brigade and drove back the advance of General Baldy Smith; again, on the 18th June, he led another attack.

He was twice offered and refused the command of the Twenty-second regiment, and after the battle of Bentonville was offered by General Johnston a commission as temporary brigadier-general.

Colonel Rion and his battalion served on the coast of South Carolina in Fort Sumter and battery Wagner, and in Virginia and North Carolina, and were engaged in twenty-two battles.

There were, besides these, two troops of cavalry from Fairfield. One troop in the First cavalry under Colonel J. L. Blacks, and another in the Sixth cavalry under Colonel Hugh K. Aiken, and another company in James' battalion. There were also soldiers from Fairfield in the Second, Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth regiments.

Colonel Aiken's life was another sacrifice for Fairfield in the cause of the South. He had been wounded at Trevillian's Station and was killed at Lynch Creek, in Chesterfield county, just before the surrender. Colonel Aiken was a gallant soldier and an estimable citizen. His distinguished brother, Colonel D. Wyat Aiken, colonel of the Seventh regiment, also was a native of this country and should be counted among her sons who served the State so well.

Bratton, the Meanses, the Aikens, the Davises, Rion, McMaster, Woodward and Black were heroes enough for Fairfield. But the heroism of our troops was not confined to their leaders. The descendants of those, who had fought under the Brattons and McLures in the Revolution, were as brave as their leaders and as conscientious in the discharge of their duty.

In that old Waxhaw churchyard I have seen this quaint inscription upon a stone:

Here lies the body of William Blair, who departed this life in the sixty-fourth year of his age on the 2d July, A. D, 1821, at 9 P. M. He was born in the county of Antrim, Ireland, on the 24th March, 1759. When about thirteen years old he came with his father to this country, where he resided till his death.

He was a Revolutionary patriot, and in the humble station of private soldier and wagon master, he contributed more to the establishment of American independence than many whose names are proudly emblazoned on the page of history. In the language of Pope, The noblest work of God is an honest man.

There was more truth in this old homely epitaph probably than in many more elegant and heroic inscriptions upon towering monuments to the great. But, however that may be, this we know that in the humble sphere of private soldiers, thousands and thousands of glorious spirits were sacrificed in our war. To this, my comrades, you can testify with me. Who of us cannot recall some man from the ranks who he hopes to see in another world glorified above generals and presidents and kings and potentates?

Let me recall an instance in our own experience to show that the race of heroic teamsters was not extinct. Upon the retreat after the battle of Gettysburg the enemy's cavalry made a rush upon our wagon trains at Williamsport. The Confederate cavalry there were insufficient for the defence of the place, and the quartermasters were called upon for men to assist. About fifty were furnished by McGowan's brigade, and, no doubt, some of the Twelfth among them, and were placed under the command of Captain R. E. B. Hewitson, quartermaster of the First. A sharp fight ensued, but the detail of teamsters from our brigade charged the line opposed them, drove them back and held the ground until relieved at night. Two of our men were killed and five or six wounded. General Imboden called it the battle of the teamsters.

The humble private in our war did indeed do more to the establishment of our independence—if that had been so ordained of God— than many whose names are proudly emblazoned on the page of history. Justice has never been done him. But he has not wanted those who appreciated him. He was thus eulogized in a paper during the war:

Jackson, Mississippi, Crisis, Marginalia, p. 174.

Among these private soldiers are to be found men of culture, men of gentle training, men of intellect, men of social position, men of character at home, men endeared to a domestic circle of refinement and elegance, men of wealth, men who gave tone and character to the society in which they moved, and men who for conscience sake have made a sacrifice of property, home, comfort, and are ready to add crimson life to the cause.

Without rank, without title, without anticipated distinction, animated only by the highest and noblest sentiments which can influence our common nature, the private labors, toils and marches and fights, endures hunger, thirst and fatigue; through watchings and weariness, sleepless nights and cheerless days, he holds up before him the one glorious prize, Freedom of my country; independence of my home.

In a recent article published in the Century magazine entitled, The Chances of being Hit in Battle, are two tables, one of the losses in Federal regiments during the war, in which the proportion of killed and wounded in a single engagement were over fifty per cent. of those present, and the other a like list of losses in the Confederate regiments. It is singular that in all there were twenty-five Federal regiments that lost in a single battle fifty per cent. and over, and almost exactly the same number in our service, we having one more, that is twenty-six regiments which lost more than fifty per cent in a single battle. The author says that these are instances of excessive loss, and that these lists represent the maximum loss and may be of interest to such historians as persist in telling of regiments that were all cut to pieces or commands which were annihilated. This table is of great interest to us of this State, for it shows that of the twenty-six regiments that sustained the heaviest losses on our side, six were South Carolina regiments, four were Georgia, four Tennessee, three Texas, three Alabama, three North Carolina, two Virginia and one Mississippi regiment. And it is of still greater interest to us here to-day, for, of these six South Carolina regiments, two of them are represented by the survivors of Fairfield district. The list is as follows: regiment.battle.Present in action.Killed and Wounded.Per Cent.First TexasAntietam22618682Twenty-first GeorgiaManassas24218476Eighth TennesseeStone River44430669Seventeenth South CarolinaManassas28418967Twenty-third South CarolinaManassas22514966Fourteenth GeorgiaMechanicsville51433565Sixteenth MississippiAntietam22814463Fifteenth VirginiaAntietam1287558Eighteenth GeorgiaAntietam 17610157Tenth GeorgiaAntietam1478356Twelfth TennesseeStone River29216456Sixteenth TennesseeStone River37720756Third AlabamaMalvern Hill35420056Seventh North CarolinaSeven Days45025356Eighteenth North CarolinaSeven Days39622456First South Carolina RiflesGaines' Mill53730656Fourth North CarolinaFair Oaks67836954Twelfth South CarolinaManassas 27014654Fourth TexasAntietam20010753Twenty-seventh TennesseeChaplin Hills21011253First South Carolina Manassas28315153Forty-ninth VirginiaFair Oaks42422452Twelfth AlabamaFair Oaks40821552Seventh South CarolinaAntietam26814052Seventh TexasRaymond 30615852Eleventh AlabamaGlendale 35718151

If this table is correct, and, no doubt, it is, it shows that Antietam, or Sharpsburg, was, on our side at least, the hardest fought field of the war, for of the twenty-six instances of greatest losses, seven of them occurred in that battle; but it shows, also, that for South Carolina troops the Second Manassas was the severest battle. Of the six instances of greatest losses among troops from this State, four of them were at Second Manassas, to-wit: The Seventeenth South Carolina, which lost 67 per cent. of those carried into action; the Twenty-third, which lost 66 per cent.; the Twelfth, which lost 54 per cent.; and the First, which lost 53 per cent. The general average of these four regiments being 60 per cent. lost of those engaged. Upon another occasion I have shown that in this battle South Carolina lost more than 25 per cent. of all her troops engaged, to-wit: eighteen regiments, including seven colonels killed.

See Southern Historical Papers, Volume XIII, p. 1.

Dignity and magnanimity alike demand, my comrades, that we, the survivors of the Confederate armies, who faithfully did our duty while we had arms in our hands, should refrain from all expression of vindictiveness and hardness of feeling to those who, with equal sincerity as ourselves, espoused the cause of the Union, and at the call of their States fought on the side in which their States had enrolled them. For myself, I can truly say that I have no feeling of hatred or animosity for the true Federal soldier. I can heartily join my Northern friends in their admiration and respect for McClellan and Meade, and Hancock and Humphreys, and many others. There are few men I would go further, personally, to serve than General Henry J. Hunt, the Federal chief of artillery in the Army of the Potomac. For the noble and generous promptings of Grant's heart in the first moments of his great triumph, and his magnanimous treatment of Lee, I feel the greatest gratitude, a gratitude which I will not allow to be diminished even by his after conduct as a politician, under the influence of party spirit at Washington; but for the malignity and brutality of Sherman, I can have nothing but indignation and resentment.

When our friends at the North, and, my comrades, we have warm and earnest friends there, beg us to forget and forgive the injuries necessarily incident to the war we ourselves dared, I heartily respond. But when I come across such a history of the war as Harper's Pictorial History of the Rebellion, and see there the pictures of the burning of Columbia and Winnsboro, and read the unpitying and exultant comments upon the misery they depict, I can feel it no part of Christian or patriotic duty to suppress the just indignation which fills my heart alike against the perpetrators and boastful recorders of such inhumanity.

There is there a picture of Winnsboro in flames, and on the next page there is one of Hanging Rock, Sumter's battle ground, and between them are pictures of Sherman's foragers and bummers coming in with their spoils and dividing their booty. With these pictures is the story that when Kilpatrick reached Hanging Rock he reported to Sherman that several dead bodies of Federal soldiers had been found in the road with a label by Hampton's cavalry, that such would be the fate of all Foragers. Whereupon Sherman, it is said, directed immediate retaliation, and is reported as having delivered himself of these heroic sentiments: Harper's Pictorial History of the Rebellion, Vol. II, p. 119.

We have a perfect right to the products of the country we overrun, and may collect them by forage or otherwise. Let the people know that the war is now against them, because their army flees before us and do not defend the country as they should. It is monstrous for Wheeler and Beauregard and such vain heroes to talk of warring against women and children. If they claim to be men they should defend their women and children and prevent us reaching their homes.

Was there ever anything more false, more atrocious, and meaner than this pitiful excuse by Sherman of his barbarity? Taunting our men because they were not there to defend their women and children, when Grant himself had just declared that we were robbing the cradle and the grave to fill our ranks against him, but which ranks, my comrades, of old men and children though they were, he had not yet been able to break!

As we have seen, Fairfield district sent into the service five companies of the Sixth, two companies of the Twelfth, two companies of the Seventeenth, one company of the First, and one company of Rion's battalion, one of James' battalion, and two of cavalry. The late General Manigault, who, as adjutant-general, did so much for the preservation of the history of the troops of this State by his faithful and zealous work under the act to provide for the preparation of the rolls of troops furnished by the State to the army of the Confederate States, estimated that each company from this State averaged one hundred and twenty-five men during the war. This would make 1,750 men furnished by Fairfield to the line, add to these the quota of staff officers and men in other commands, and we have no doubt Fairfield alone furnished 2,000 men. By the census of 1860 there were but 3,241 white males of all ages in this district, and but 1,578 between the ages of fifteen and fifty; so that the whole armsbear-ing population of the county was in the army. And yet Sherman attempts to cover his brutality by the falsehood and sneer, that these men would not fight.

Need those who had chased this same redoubtable hero from the first battlefield of the war desire his encomiums upon their courage? Need they boast that they were men who had fought and defeated McClellan and Pope, and Burnside and Hooker and Rosencranz; who had driven McClellan to his gunboats and chased Pope to Washington; who had slaughtered Burnside at Fredericksburg and routed Hooker at Chancellorsville; who had held Fort Sumter against all comers; who had left their dead from Charleston to Gettysburg, from Gettysburg to Chickamauga, and from Chickamauga to Knoxville, and from Knoxville to the Wilderness; who had defeated a much greater man than Sherman—Grant himself—in every engagement from the Wilderness to Petersburg; had killed and wounded in a month more men in Grant's army than they had in their own; who had yielded at last, not to Grant, nor to Sherman—not to arms, but to starvation? As General Preston has so well expressed it:

Address before Survivors' Association, Columbia, 1870.

It was on the wives and children of these men that Sherman warred.

In American histories Tarleton's Quarter was, for near a century, the proverb for cruelty and barbarity. But when Tarleton crossed at Rocky Mount in pursuit of Sumter, and mercilessly slew his men at Fishing Creek, he did so when battling against men whom the rules of war justified his slaying when its fortunes placed them in his power. It remained for Sherman, at Hanging Rock, the scene of Sumter's great battle, to proclaim there war against women and children—women and children, the descendants of the heroes who had died on that very spot eighty years before for American freedom.

But, my comrades, I must not dwell on these things. Let us turn aside from them. Let us still strive to think of Rocky Mount and Hanging Rock as the glorious battlefields of our forefathers, rather than as the scenes of pillage of those who called themselves our countrymen. Let us think rather of Tarleton's massacre of Bufort's men at the Waxhaw and of the destruction of Sumter's at Fishing Creek; for however dreadful those deeds, and distressing to the recollection, they bring no tinge of shame or cry for vengeance, but only of pity for the slaughter of brave men who fell by the accidents of war. Dwell upon those horrors of the Revolution, rather than upon these deeds in our war of men calling themselves American—seeds committed under Sherman's sanction.

Yes, my friends, let us forget, if we can, these atrocities, though we pass the scenes of them day by day. Let us forget them, if we can, for it is not only the part of wisdom but of patriotism to bury the remembrance of these great wrongs.

Lord Macaulay in his essay upon Hampden observes:

How it chanced that a country conquered and enslaved by invaders; a country of which the soil had been portioned out among adventurers, and of which the laws were written in a foreign tongue; a country given over to that worst tyranny, the tyranny of caste over caste, should have become the seat of civil liberty, the object of the admiration and envy of surrounding States, is one of the most obscure problems in the philosophy of history. But the fact is certain.

Will some future historian ponder how it chanced that the people of the South, conquered by the numbers and resources of the North; a people whose very soil had been in a great measure confiscated by alien adventurers, thieves and outcasts left in the wake of Sherman's plundering march; a people who had been given over to a tyranny of caste infinitely greater and more galling than that of which Macaulay wrote, because it was the tyranny of the inferior caste over the superior; became the restorers and guardians of civil liberty, the admiration of other people?

We may not yet say that however difficult it is of explanation, the fact is certain. But we can truly say that the Southern people are wisely and patiently and courageously dealing with problems as great, if not greater, than those solved by the English Commons under Hampden. Your victorious ancestors, my comrades, proved themselves equal to the task of building up a government designed to preserve the liberties they had won. That government was perverted from the purposes for which it was formed, and in your attempt to exercise the right your forefathers had reserved for you, to withdraw from the Union should it become oppressive, you were defeated. It remains to be proven whether the people of the South can turn their defeat into victory. In God's providence it has happened that no nation has ever risen to greatness except through adversity. True national greatness survives conquest. Mr. Leckie, the historian, in his work upon England in the Eighteenth Century, wisely observes that it was probably a misfortune to Ireland that she never passed, like the rest of Europe, under the subjection of the Romans, and a calamity to her that the Norman conquest was not finally effected as in England by a single battle. Conquered England absorbed and changed and moulded her conquerors. Will this be our case?

Wonderful progress has the South already made in sharing the intellectual government of the country; within twenty years after a crushing defeat—a defeat followed by ten years of alien misrule, she has already had the government of the country practically in her keeping for the last four years, and so wisely has she exercised it that not even in this year of a presidential election has it been said that she has abused her opportunities to the securing of spoils or the gratification of revenge.

Hampden led the English Commons in resistance to unjust taxation, and to-day the great commoner of this country, Mr. Mills, who is a South Carolinian and a native of Fairfield, has carried successfully through the House of Representatives the great measure of revenue reform.

It is admitted throughout the world that in the late war the South proved itself a people of wonderful military capacity, resource and enterprise, as well as courage. But it remains especially to the rising generation to show that in its hands the pen is equal to, if not mightier than the sword.

Three or four years ago I saw in a northern journal a warning to the young men of the North that a review of the collegiate terms just then ended showed a wonderful advance in Southern scholarship; that all over the North Southern boys were contending for the highest places in the educational institutions. The writer reminded the young men of the North that it was by the devotion to the education of her young men that the South had controlled the government for nearly eighty years from its commencement, and attributed its loss of control to the neglect of this means by which she had gained it, and warned the young men of the North that the renewed devotion of the South to education might again give to the South the government if the youths of the North should yield to the inertia of luxury. Since that article has appeared, South Carolina has had in the great national educational institution at West Point a contestant for the first place in three out of four graduating classes. In one of them the youthful representative of this State outstripped all his competitors, graduating with next to the highest record ever reached in that institution.

Henry Jervey, of Charleston.

As Dr. Foote has written of the women of this section in earlier days: an education, knowledge of things human and divine, they prized beyond all price in their leaders and teachers, and craved its passion for their husbands and brothers and sons. The Spartan mother gloried in the bravery of their husbands and fathers, and demanded it in their sons. Bring me this or be brought back upon it, said one as she gave him his shield to go out to battle. But your mothers, my comrades, as Dr. Foote says, gloried in the enterprise and religion and knowledge and purity of their husbands and children and would forego comforts and endure toil that their sons might be well instructed enterprising men. Their daughters, the women of our day, with devotion not less than Spartan, buckled on the swords of their husbands and sons, who needed no injunction to return with them only with honor, and when they came not back, these same women devoted themselves to the education of the sons left dependent upon them.

Like Esther Gaston of old, they nursed the wounded fathers, and like the wife of Justice Gaston they educated the sons.

Of how many of their sons may it be said: