Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/773

Rh, is a native of that city, born in 1841. He was reared and educated at Richmond until the secession of the State, when, though he had not yet reached the military age, he entered with enthusiasm into the Confederate cause. He enlisted, April 21, 1861, as a private in Company D of the First Virginia regiment of infantry, and served about seven months before it was discovered that he was under the required age. He was then discharged from the service, but in spite of this he managed to remain with his company another three or four months, and rendered active service in many important engagements. Finally returning to Richmond he soon afterward became a member of the President's Guard, with the rank of first sergeant, and subsequently was promoted first lieutenant. With this command he served at the president's home, and in and about the city in its defense and finally, during the siege of 1864-6S at Fort Harrison. At the evacuation of the city, he was captured by the Federal troops, and paroled there. Among the battles in which he participated were Bull Run, First Manassas, Mason's Hill, Munson's Hill, Fairfax Court House, Falls Church and the fighting at Fort Harrison in defense of Richmond, in all of which he rendered honorable service as a Confederate soldier. Lieutenant Bass was in command of the company that brought the prisoners off of the boat Shawsheen. After the close of the war he engaged in commercial pursuits and is now successfully conducting a wholesale grocery business. In March, 1864, Lieutenant Bass was married to Sallie E., daughter of Robert Redford, a native of Virginia, and they have four sons and three daughters living, and have lost one daughter. Lieutenant Bass is a valued member of both the R. E. Lee and G. E. Pickett camps of Confederate veterans at Richmond.

Rev. Henry Wilson Battle, D. D., was born July 19, 1856, in the town of Tuskegee, Ala., which in those days few southern communities outranked in wealth and refinement. In the first part of the century, his grandfather. Dr. Cullen Battle, a man of refined culture and ample wealth, had emigrated from the Old North State. Henry's father rendered distinguished services to the South in the hour of her need and her greatest peril. On the platform during those years of heated debate, that finally precipitated the civil war, his eloquent tongue was often heard, and his name was often coupled with Alabama's greatest forensic orator, William L. Yancey. And when the war of words became a war of swords, there was not a braver soldier, or more gallant officer, to follow the fortunes of the Confederacy than Brig.-Gen. Cullen A. Battle, of the army of Northern Virginia. Early in life Henry W. Battle showed the marks of this heredity in his strong mental endowments and oratorical gifts. Before he had attained his majority he was chosen by the executive committee of the Democratic party of Alabama to canvass the State with the famous orator. Gen. Alpheus Baker, and at the following session of the legislature, his disabilities of nonage were removed by special act, to enable him to hold office. At the age of nineteen he became a member of one of the most distinguished and brilliant bars in the South. Three years after his admission to the bar, and while there was pending a flattering proposition to practice law in New York, to the surprise of his friends he suddenly announced his purpose to enter the gospel ministry, and in less than a month he had entered the Southern Baptist theological seminary. Dr. Battle's first pastorate was at Columbus,