Red, white, and blue recipes from the collection.

USE Ruby Red Rasberry Salad-Rush Hour Superchef!

Ruby Red Raspberry Salad from Rush hour superchef! : with step-by-step menus.

USE White grapes divine - The Charlotte Cookbook

White Grapes Divine from The Charlotte cookbook.

USE Fresh blueberry cobbler - Hyde County Cookbook

Fresh Blueberry Cobbler from Hyde County cook book.

USE Red Devil Franks-Favorite Recipies Blowing Rock

Red Devil Franks from Favorite recipes : Blowing Rock.

USE White potato casserole - What's Cook'n at Biltmore

White Potato Casserole from What’s cook’n at Biltmore.

USE Classic Blueberry Griddle Cakes - Cooking with Berries

Classic Blueberry Griddle Cakes from Cooking with berries.

USE Red Tripe with White Rice-Hallelujah! The Welcome Table

Red Tripe with White Rice from Hallelujah! the welcome table : a lifetime of memories with recipes.

USE Strawberries in white wine - Classic Cookbook of Duke Hospital

Strawberries in White Wine from Classic cookbook.

USE Blue Cheese Dogs - A Taste of the Old and the New

Blue Cheese Dogs from A Taste of the old and the new.

Check out what’s new in the North Carolina Collection.

Several new titles just added to “New in the North Carolina Collection.” To see the full list simply click on the link in the entry or click on the “New in the North Carolina Collection” tab at the top of the page. As always, full citations for all the new titles can be found in the University Library Catalog and they are all available for use in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Greetings on the Gettysburg Battlefield-Pt. 2

The 1903 meeting of onetime foes on the Gettysburg battlefield sparked interest among North Carolina Miscellany readers. So today’s post provides a few more details on the first encounter between Lt. Colonel John R. Lane of the 26th North Carolina Regiment and Sgt. Charles H. McConnell of the 24th Michigan Regiment of the Iron Brigade (note the previous post incorrectly described McConnell as a colonel).

Photograph from George C. Underwood's History of the N.C. 26th Regiment
Photograph from George C. Underwood’s History of the N.C. 26th Regiment
Photograph from George C. Underwood's History of the N.C. 26th Regiment, 1901
Photograph from George C. Underwood’s History of the N.C. 26th Regiment, 1901

Lane, a native of Chatham County, and McConnell, a Chicago native, faced each other in battle during the first day of fighting at Gettysburg. The 26th North Carolina was charging the Union lines in McPherson’s Woods. They were met with strong resistance by the 24th Michigan and suffered numerous casualties. The flag of the 26th had fallen 11 times as successive color guards were killed or wounded. As Col. Henry K. Burgwyn rescued the colors and prepared to hand them off to a private, he was shot in his left side and fell. Shortly after taking the flag, the private, too, was shot. Lane stepped up to serve as the 14th standard bearer. As recounted in the 26th’s regimental history, Lane shouted at the top of his voice, “Twenty-sixth follow me.”

The men answer with a yell and press forward. Several lines of the enemy have given away, but a most formidable line yet remains, which seems determined to hold its position. Volleys of musketry are fast thinning out those left and only a skeleton line now remains. To add to the horrors of the scene, the battle smoke has settled down over the combatants making it almost as dark as night. With a cheer the men obey the command to advance, and rush on and upward to the summit of the hill, when the last line of the enemy gives way and sullenly retires from the field through the village of Gettysburg to the heights beyond the cemetery.

Just as the last shots are firing, a sergeant in the Twenty-Fourth Michigan Regiment (now the President of the Iron Brigade Veteran Association, Mr. Charles H. McConnell, of Chicago), attracted by the commanding figure of Colonel Lane carrying the colors, lingers to take a farewell shot, and resting his musket on a tree, he waits his opportunity. When about thirty steps distant, as Colonel Lane turns to see if his regiment is following him, a ball fired by this brave and resolute adversary, strikes him in the back of the neck just below the brain, which crashes through his jaw and mouth, and for the fourteenth and last time the colors are down. The red field was won, but at what cost to the victor as well as the vanquished.

The cost of the battle to Lane may have been his ability to clearly communicate. Lane was among the speakers at the 1903 Gettysburg commemoration, the same event during which he was photographed with McConnell. His talk included a recitation of the battle, drawn, he said, from the regimental history. But before detailing his actions and those of his comrades in arms, Lane offered an apology.

I must warn you that you must not expect a highly wrought oration from me. I was once a soldier, never a speaker. Besides, our good friends, the enemy, took care on this field of Gettysburg that I should never become an orator, for a Yankee bullet ruined my throat and took away a part of my tongue and deprived me of my teeth.

After fighting ceased at Gettysburg, Lane was among the wounded placed on a southbound wagon train. The caravan had not ventured far when it was attacked by Union cavalry. According to the regimental history, Lane “at once got out of the wagon, mounted his horse and made his escape, though he was at the time unable to speak or to receive nourishment in the natural way. He was unable to take any nourishment for nine days, owing to the swollen and inflamed condition of his throat and mouth, and it was thought impossible for him ever to get well.”

But Lane did get well. And he continued to fight with the 26th North Carolina, sustaining three more severe wounds before finally being hospitalized in Greensboro. He was there when his unit surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

Photo from George C. Underwood's History of the N.C. 26th Regiment, 1901.
Photo from George C. Underwood’s History of the N.C. 26th Regiment, 1901.

Greetings on the Gettysburg Battlefield in 1903

John Randolph Lane meets Charles H. McConnell
Col. John R. Lane (left) poses with Sgt. Charles H. McConnell by monument to 24th Michigan at Gettysburg in 1903.

Within these woods on that fateful afternoon of the first day of July 1863, perhaps in less than an hour, the 26th North Carolina of Pettigrew’s Brigade suffered more casualties than any regiment on either side, in any battle, during the entire Civil War. But the 24th Michigan and the other regiments of Meredith’s Iron Brigade, standing in the path of the 26th, yielded ground just as stubbornly as the aggressor fought for it. During their bitter fight to the finish courage knew no bounds. Both sides were American to the core.

Therefore, in honoring one we honor the other, and we do so in the same spirit in which Colonel John Randolph Lane of the 26th North Carolina and Colonel Charles H. McConnell of the 24th Michigan exchanged greetings on this battlefield eighty-two years ago. It was their second meeting, and the [photo above] bears faithful witness. They first met 40 years earlier, in this immediate vicinity, on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg when McConnell shot and severely wounded Lane, leaving him for dead on the battlefield. Only moments earlier, the gallant Colonel Henry King Burgwyn, Jr., had been mortally wounded. Major John T. Jones succeeded Lane in command of the 26th. The command of this regiment changed hands three times before Meredith’s Iron Brigade finally abandoned those woods and fell back on Seminary Ridge.

–from remarks by Archie K. Davis at dedication of a monument to the 26th North Carolina Regiment at Gettysburg National Military Park on 5 October 1985. Davis’s remarks are part of “Gallantry Unsurpassed”: Proceedings of the Dedication Ceremony for a Monument to the 26th North Carolina Regiment, Gettysburg National Military Park, 5 October 1985. According to Lane family lore, McConnell once visited Lane at his home in Chatham County, but Lane’s wife refused to allow McConnell to enter the house.

Hatteras’s unlikely flotsam: 10,000 stovepipe hats

“[In March 1867] the steamer Flambeau drove ashore on Hatteras Island near New Inlet….No lives were lost, but the ship was destroyed [and] her cargo floated out and washed ashore.

“She was laden with 10,000 stovepipe hats! They were beaver hats, no longer stylish, having been replaced by silk high hats, and they were practically unsaleable. Two promoters had bought up all they could find and shipped them to South America, whee they were still in fashion.

“Cape Hatteras wrecked their plans. The promoters, unwilling to give up their sartorial coup, turned to political influence. Every man, woman and child on Hatteras had one or more of those hats until the officers of the Military Government, on orders from Washington, began a house to house search, intent on returning the hats to their rightful owners. One Hatteraser was quoted as saying that even the porpoises wore stovepipe hats that spring.

“The final accounting of the promoters’ hat venture is not known.”

– From “The Civil War on the Outer Banks” by Fred M. Mallison (1997)