attendance of President Polk, Secretary Mason and Lieutenant Maury
of the National Observatory. Impressed by the homage universally
paid to his talents and acquirements, as well as by the high
character of his graduating oration, these gentlemen proposed to
him to become an assistant in the Observatory. After spending some
weeks in recreation, Mr. Pettigrew reported to Lieutenant Maury,
and remained with him for six or eight months. In the occupations
of this office he fully maintained his earlier promise, but soon
relinquished the position, inasmuch as the exposure and labor
incident to it were injuriously affecting his health.
After an interval of travel in the Northern States, Mr. Pettigrew,
in the fall of 1848, became a student of law in the office of James
Mason Campbell, Esq., of Baltimore, where he remained for several
months. At the close of this period, by the solicitation of his
kinsman, the late James L. Petigru of Charleston, S. C., he entered
his office with the design of being subsequently associated with
him in the practice of his profession. Upon obtaining license, Mr.
Pettigrew, by the advice of the kinsman just mentioned, proceeded
to Berlin and to other universities in Germany, in order to perfect
himself in the civil law. He remained in Europe for nearly three
years. Two years of this time he devoted to study, the remainder
he spent in traveling upon the Continent, and in Great Britain
and Ireland. He availed himself of this opportunity of becoming
acquainted with modern European languages so far as to be able
to speak with ease German, French, Italian, and Spanish. During
this tour he contracted a great partiality for Spanish character
and history, having had considerable opportunity for studying the
former, not only as a private gentleman, but also as Secretary of
Legation, for a short while, to Colonel Barringer, then Minister of
the United States near the Court of Spain. It may be proper to add
here, that among the unaccomplished designs of Mr. Pettigrew, to
which he had given some labor, was that of following Prescott in
further narratives of the connection of Spain with America, and as
a preliminary to this, he had made a collection of works in Arabic,
and had made himself acquainted with that language.
Mr. Pettigrew returned to Charleston in November, 1852, and entered
upon the practice of law in connection with his honored and
accomplished relative. He profited so well by his studies in Europe
and by his subsequent investigations, that in the opinion of his
partner, who was well qualified to judge, he became a master of the
civil law not inferior in acquisition and in grasp of principle to
any in the United States. His success at the bar was brilliant.
In 1856 he was chosen one of the representatives of the city in
the Legislature, holding his seat under that election for the two
sessions of December, 1856, and December, 1857. He rose to great
distinction in that body. His report against the reopening of the
slave-trade, and his speech upon the organization of the Supreme
Court, gave him reputation beyond the bounds of the State. He failed
to be reelected in 1858.
Mr. Pettigrew persistently refused to receive any portion of the
income of the partnership of which he was a member. Independent
in property, and simple in his habits of personal expenditure, he
displayed no desire to accumulate money. Noble in every trait of
character, he held the contents of his purse subject to every draft
that merit might present.
For some years previous to the rupture between the North and the
South, Mr. Pettigrew had anticipated its occurrence, and believing
it to be his duty to be prepared to give his best assistance to the
South, in such event, had turned his attention to military studies.
Like many other rare geniuses, he had always a partiality for
mathematics, and so very naturally devoted much time to that branch
of this science which deals with war. Even as far back as 1850 he
had been desirous of becoming an officer in the Prussian army; and
negotiations for that end, set upon foot by military friends whom
he had made at Berlin, failed only because he was a republican.
Afterwards he became aid to Governor Allston of South Carolina, and
more recently to Governor Pickens. Upon the breaking out of the war
between Sardinia and Austria, Colonel Pettigrew at once arranged his
private business and hastened to obtain position in the army under
General Marmora.
His application to Count Cavour was favorably received, but after
consideration his offer was declined on the ground that the event of
the battle of Solferino had rendered further fighting improbable.
He was greatly disappointed, as his reception had inspired him
with hopes of seeing active service in the Sardinian army with
rank, at least as high as that of a colonel. Availing himself,
however, of his unexpected leisure, he revisited Spain, and after
a stay of a few months returned to South Carolina. The fruits of
this second visit were collected by him into a volume entitled
_Spain and Spaniards_, which he printed, for the inspection of his
friends, in 1860. It will be found to be a thoughtful, spirited, and
agreeable record of his impressions of that romantic land. At the
opening of the present war, Colonel Pettigrew, as aid to Governor
Pickens, took a prominent part in the operations at Charleston.
He was at that time also colonel of a rifle regiment, in which
he was much interested, and which became conspicuous amongst the
military organizations around Charleston in the winter of 1860-'61.
As commander of this body he received the surrender of Castle
Pinckney, and subsequently held himself in readiness to storm Fort
Sumter, in case it had not been surrendered after bombardment. Later
in the spring, having failed to procure the incorporation of his
regiment into the army of the Confederate States, and believing
there was little chance of seeing active service in South Carolina,
he transferred himself to Hampton's legion as a private, and early
in the summer accompanied that corps into Virginia. A few days
afterwards he was recalled to the service of his native State by
an unsolicited election as Colonel of the Twelfth Regiment of
North Carolina volunteers, afterwards the Twenty-second Regiment
of North Carolina troops. It had been Colonel Pettigrew's earnest
wish to become connected with the North Carolina army, so he at once
accepted the honorable position, and repaired to Raleigh, where his
regiment was stationed in its camp of instruction. He devoted his
attention to its discipline with great assiduity, and in the early
days of August was ordered into Virginia. The fall and winter of
1861 were spent by him near Evansport, upon the Potomac. He gave his
whole time and attention to perfecting his regiment in the duties
of soldiers. He fully shared in every hardship that was incident
to their situation. In this new position Colonel Pettigrew became
conspicuous for another characteristic necessary to eminent success
in every department, but especially in that of military life. He was
an adept in the art of personally attaching to him the men under
his charge. Their enthusiasm knew no bounds. Their confidence in
his administration of the police of the camp was perfect, and their
assurance of his gallantry and skill unqualified. He soon felt
that he might rely upon his brave men for all that was possible
to soldiers. Being offered promotion to the rank of brigadier,
he declined it on the ground that it would separate him from his
regiment. Sometime later, in the spring of 1862, an arrangement
was made by which the Twelfth Regiment was included in the brigade
that was tendered to him, and he no longer felt any difficulty in
accepting the promotion.
General Pettigrew shared in the march under General Johnston into
the Peninsula, and afterwards, in the retreat upon Richmond. On
the first 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 led 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 not
upon either 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 afterwards 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
Gettysburg he was in command of 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 afterwards 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 Waters.
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 moment's 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 Gettysburg.
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.
Mrs. Spencer's sketch was written in 1863 and published in the
_Fayetteville Observer_. It will also be found in her _Last Ninety
Days of the War_, as an appendix. Other sketches since written may
have added opinions, but very few facts.
The stranger may ask, What has this young man done that he should
be placed by the side of Davie, Macon, Murphy, Badger, and Ruffin?
In intellectual grasp he was the equal of any of them--probably the
superior of all. As an original thinker, as a practical investigator
in new and untried fields, it does not appear what he might have
been.
He was on the crest of the highest wave of Southern valor and
patriotism as it swept over the mountains of Pennsylvania.
In Longstreet's assault, in the third day's fight at Gettysburg
(which some Virginia historians, with amusing vanity, call
"Pickett's charge"), Pettigrew's command, Heth's Division, bore
the brunt of the enemy's resistance. Five of the North Carolina
regiments following Pettigrew had more men killed than Pickett's
fifteen. His own brigade (four regiments at Gettysburg) carried into
Longstreet's assault about fourteen hundred and eighty men; its loss
in killed and wounded was four hundred and forty-five.
This same brigade, Pettigrew in command, held the pivot of the first
day's fight, but at a fearful cost. Out of the twenty-two hundred
engaged it lost six hundred and sixty killed and wounded.
In this brigade was the famous Twenty-sixth North Carolina Regiment,
under Harry K. Burgwyn, which lost in the first day's fight five
hundred and eighty-eight men killed and wounded out of a total of
eight hundred and in Longstreet's assault one hundred and twenty
of the remnant, the greatest loss and the greatest percentage of
loss of any regiment in either army in any battle during the Civil
War. Its gallant colonel (Burgwyn) was among the last of fifteen
color-bearers who fell with the flag in their hands.
In the first day's fight Pettigrew was engaged with the famous
"Iron Brigade," in which was the Twenty-fourth Michigan, facing
the Twenty-sixth North Carolina in the open field at close range,
gradually getting closer as the Federals slowly retired through
field and woods for an hour and a half, until finally, and before
the Twenty-fourth broke, they were within one hundred feet of each
other, at which range they continued for twenty or thirty minutes.
Captain J. J. Davis (afterwards Associate Justice of our Supreme
Court) was an eye-witness and participant. He says: "The advantage
was everywhere with the Confederate side, and I aver that this was
greatly, if not chiefly, due to Pettigrew's Brigade and its brave
commander. The bravery of that knightly soldier and elegant scholar,
as he galloped along the line in the hottest of the fight, cheering
on his men, cannot be effaced from my memory."
After this frightful day's work he was chosen to lead Heth's
Division in Longstreet's assault. And though wounded in this assault
by a grape-shot through his hand, he it was who, on the retreat of
Lee's army, was chosen to command the rear guard, which consisted
of his own shattered brigade and another. This was the duty that
Napoleon assigned to Marshal Ney, "the bravest of the brave." And it
was in the discharge of this duty that Pettigrew lost his life.
Dr. W. H. Lilly, of Concord, N. C., an eye-witness and the physician
who was with General Pettigrew when he got his death-wound, at my
request gives me a short account taken from his diary kept at the
time:
"General Pettigrew was carrying his wounded hand in a sling.... On
the night of July 13th we started on our march to the river. It
was raining, and very dark, so that we proceeded very slowly. On
the morning of the 14th, General Pettigrew, with his and General
Archer's Brigades, was left as rear guard while the wagons and
artillery were crossing the river on the pontoon bridge. While our
men were lying down a large body of cavalry appeared in our rear. A
squadron from the main body came riding up to our line. They were
at first thought to be our men retiring before the main body of
the advancing enemy. When near us a small United States flag was
recognized, and they were in our midst before we fired on them.
General Pettigrew's horse threw him, as he had only the use of one
hand. He then began to snap his pistol at one of them, who turned
and shot him in the abdomen. The General's pistol did not fire, as
the powder was wet from the heavy rain. Nearly the entire squadron
was killed or captured. We put General Pettigrew on a stretcher
and carried him over the river at once. I advised him to remain in
a house, and assured him that his only chance for life was in his
being entirely quiet. He refused, saying he would rather die than
fall into the hands of the enemy. We brought him in an ambulance to
Bunker Hill and put him into Mr. Boyd's house, where he died at 6:30
A. M. on the morning of July 17th."
Why was it that this young man (who rarely went into a fight that
he did not get hit) was preferred for responsible and dangerous
commands before the officers trained at West Point? He had the
genius for war and the spirit of a hero-martyr.
In the blood of his crucified cause was written the mightiest
protest ever filed for the judgment of posterity against the class
legislation, the centralization and the aggrandizement of the
General Government in copartnership with the preferred and protected
States--a copartnership out of which has been spawned a still more
unholy alliance with the corporations and moneyed institutions which
have their roots in those States and in foreign countries.
Not in blood, we hope, but nevertheless bravely and patriotically,
let the young men of this day and generation strive to free our
Union from the domination of domestic traitors and entangling
alliances with foreign foes.
I have selected two short extracts from his book, _Spain and the
Spaniards_, as giving a hint of his style and habits of thought. The
book was intended for private circulation among his friends, and
was written, doubtless, with the usual speed of young authors. It
indicates considerable learning and research, but its arrangement
is somewhat crude and its style not always sufficiently careful
and clear. One might well wish that he had devoted his life to
literature, but his talents were so varied and versatile it is hard
to say where he would have most excelled.
* * * * *
THE CHARACTER OF THE BRITISH.