Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/755

258 Station, fell this noble son of Mississippi on the threshold of what promised to be a brilliant career.

Brigadier-General Nathaniel H. Harris is another one of the galaxy of gallant officers who so nobly illustrated Mississippi during the war. Fully imbued with the sentiments which inspired the South in the sixties, he entered the Confederate army in April, 1861, as a captain in the Nineteenth Mississippi. This regiment was sent to Virginia and placed under the command of General Griffith. During the greater part of 1861 it was stationed near Leesburg, Va. On October 18, 1861, it was engaged in a skirmish under the eye of Gen. Nathan G. Evans. In the spring of 1862 the heroic record of the Nineteenth Mississippi really began, with the battle of Williamsburg. Lieut.-Col. L. Q. C. Lamar, who succeeded to the command on the fall of Colonel Mott, in his report of this battle says: "To Capt. N. H. Harris of Company C special praise is due, not only for his gallant bearing on the field, but for his unremitting attention to his command." Captain Harris was soon after this appointed major of the regiment, his commission dating from the battle of Williamsburg, March 5, 1862. At Seven Pines Major Harris acted on the staff of Gen. Cadmus Wilcox, and was complimented in the report of that officer. Prom the campaigns in northern Virginia and Maryland Major Harris returned to be honored by being promoted lieutenant-colonel, November 24, 1862. On the 2d of April, 1863, he was appointed colonel, and as such he participated in the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. On January 20, 1864, he was promoted to brigadier-general to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of General Posey. The brigade to whose command he now succeeded was composed of the Twelfth, Sixteenth, Nineteenth and Forty-eighth regiments of Mississippi infantry and was assigned to Mahone's division of A. P. Hill's corps. The hardest campaign of the war was now