Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/632

586 flank movement, and while Evans, reinforced by Bee and Bartow, opposed the enemy in that quarter, he sustained the attack in the vicinity of the stone bridge, with his headquarters at the Lewis house, until at 2 p. m., about an hour before the arrival of Elzey, he led his brigade into action on the left with "alacrity and effect." This was his last battle. After eight months' service, during which he was promoted brigadier-general in the provisional army, he returned home, shattered in body and mind, and his life was terminated December 26, 1861.

Brigadier-General Raleigh Edward Colston was born at Paris, France, of Virginia parentage, October 31, 1825. When seventeen years old he came to America with a passport, as a citizen of the United States, issued by Minister Carr, and entering the Virginia military institute, was graduated in 1846. He remained at the institute as a professor until April, 1861, when he marched to Richmond in command of the corps of cadets. In May he was commissioned colonel of the Sixteenth Virginia regiment of infantry, at Norfolk, and was later assigned to command of a brigade and a district on the south side of the James river, with headquarters at Smithfield. He was promoted brigadier-general December 24, 1861. In the spring of 1862 he moved his brigade, composed of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth North Carolina and Third Virginia regiments, to Yorktown, and participated in the defense of that post, and after the retreat to Williamsburg, in the battle there and at Seven Pines. He was then disabled by illness until December, 1862, when he was assigned to command of a brigade in the department of Southern Virginia and North Carolina, and from January to March, 1863, was in command, at Petersburg. After the battle of Fredericksburg he was assigned, at Stonewall Jackson's request, to the Third brigade of Jackson's old division, and previous to the battle of Chancellorsville was given command of the division, which was distinguished for heroism on the 2d and 3d of May, participating, under his command, in the onslaught made in the evening of Saturday, and fighting desperately during the storm of battle which swayed to and fro over the Federal works on Sunday morning. On Sunday afternoon he made an advance toward the United States ford, in which his division, suffered severely. His 