Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/845

Rh county in the legislature, is a member of the executive committee, of the board of trustees of the State university, and was president of the Western North Carolina hospital from 1887 to 1891.

Major Reuben Everett Wilson, of Salem, a crippled Confederate veteran, who has worn the gray ever since 1861, had a particularly noteworthy career in the military service of the South. He was born in that part of Stokes county, now called Yadkin, in 1841, and entered the service May 12, 1861, as a member of the Yadkin Gray Eagles, a volunteer organization which was sent to Danville and mustered in as a part of the Eleventh volunteers, later known as the Twenty-first regiment, North Carolina troops. At the reorganization this regiment had twelve companies, and Companies A and B, to the former of which Major Wilson then belonged with the rank of lieutenant, were made the nucleus of the First North Carolina battalion of sharpshooters. This organization was preserved throughout the war, though it served, whenever needed, attached to various brigades of Swell’s corps, and at the end Mr. Wilson was in command with the rank of major. The battalion participated in no less than twenty-six battles during the war : Bull Run, First Manassas, First Winchester, Cross Keys, Cold Harbor, Chaffin s Farm, Slaughter s Mountain, Hazel River, Manassas Junction, Second Manassas, Chantilly, Harper’s Ferry, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Second Winchester, Spottsylvania Court House, Gettysburg, Mine Run, Batchelder’s Creek, Warsaw, N. C., Newtown, Hatcher’s Run, Petersburg, and Battery 45, before Petersburg and Major Wilson was in many of them. He was wounded in the leg and arm at Hazel River, and in his last fight received a severe wound in the foot, which caused its amputation after the war. His battalion had been employed during the winter seasons in western North Carolina, and Virginia for the purpose of intercepting deserters, and on the charge of having shot some of these, he was re-arrested after his parole at Appomattox, and sent to the Virginia penitentiary, where, and at Raleigh penitentiary, he was held until December, 1865, the only other Confederates imprisoned at that time being President Davis and Major Gee, of Florida. Finally, on being given a trial, he was dis-