Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/397

 General George Burgwyn Anderson. 391

resigned his commission in the United States army, and, promptly returning to his native State, tendered his sword in her defence, being the first of her sons then in that army to perform that act of. filial devotion. That sword was already consecrated by the blood of a brilliant young officer, who had drawn his first breath on the banks of the Cape Fear and had yielded his last in a desperate charge at Pue- blo de Taos in Mexico — his brave and accomplished uncle. Captain John Henry King Burgwyn, who, on that fatal field, ended a career which, by the common consent of his superiors, would, if not untimely closed, have placed him at the head of his profession. Like his gal- lant and gifted nephew, that heroic son of North Carolina found his last resting place in the soil he loved so well, for although the victim of

"A petty fortress and a dubious hand "

in a foreign land, more than one thousand miles from the western-most border of his native State, his mortal remains— under the protecting care of a paternal love, like that of the historic Ormond, who "pre- ferred his dead son to all the living sons in Christendom" — were brought back to North Carolina and now lie beneath a memorial shaft at Wilmington. He was of a good and ancient lineage, and, dying as he had lived, a brave and chivalric gentleman, bequeathed to his family with his stainless sword a spotless name.

When George Anderson became an officer in the army in which his uncle had served, he buckled on that sword, and when the trying hour which separated him from that service came, with fervent love and that inexorable sense of honor and duty which was the all-con- trolling motive of his whole life, he turned to North Carolina and rever- ently laid it at her feet. It was an offering gladly accepted, and he was immediately commissioned Colonel of the Fourth regiment. There was an eagerness among the companies already organized to get under his command, and, therefore, some of the officers without commands who had been assigned to him (of whom I was one) were displaced, and, perhaps, fortunately for them, the regiment was soon completed and took its departure from Raleigh.

Not having seen George Anderson since he was a school-boy, and never seeing him afterwards, the recollection of his appearance at that time is very distinct to me. I can see him now as he greeted me that May morning in 1861, when I reported to him here in Raleigh— a splendid specimen of vigorous manhood ; tall, erect, brown-bearded, deep-chested, round-limbed, with a musical voice and a smile as gen-