Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/23

 Heroes of the old Camden District, S. C. 1 7

5, 1862. General Bratton, in an account published in the Southern Historical Society Papers, which he wrote in 1868, after all his great experience on so many battlefields during the rest of the war, writes of his old regiment on that occasion : "I have never on any field during the war seen more splendid gallantry exhibited than on that field of Williamsburg." He adds, " This was the first and last time I ever asked for a place in a charge a pardonable folly I hope at that stage of the war."*

Then came the battle of Seven Pines, in which the Sixth was again conspicuously engaged and in which it suffered so terribly. Colonel Bratton himself was severely wounded and fell into the hands of the enemy.

The blood of other Revolutionary stock was poured out in this battle in the ranks of the Sixth. Upon the reorganization of the regiment, Joseph Lucien Gaston had been elected captain of the Chester Blues. A younger brother and himself were killed in a few feet of each other at Seven Pines. We have seen how Esther Gaston and her sister had nursed the wounded at Bufort's massacre and at Hanging Rock. These gallant sons of her family died on the field before such tender ministrations could be made to them.

Captain Gaston was a man of the highest order and the most scrupulous integrity. His mind was strong and well balanced. He was highly cultivated. How could he be otherwise, coming from a family which even in the midst of the Revolution had not failed to teach the youth around them. He was a young lawyer of great promise, and had the fairest prospects of attaining the highest honor of his profession. His aged relative and partner has often been heard to say that Mr. Gaston was the best man he ever knew, and came as near perfection as poor human nature can attain to. He was a hero indeed. For he was one of those who was not carried into the war by the rushing tide of enthusiasm ; he was one of those true martyrs to our cause, who conscientiously and decidedly opposed to secession, yet, when the State in her sovereignty had acted, did not hesitate to obey her, but was amongst the very first to step to the front in her defence. To such men, what meed of praise can we award adequate to their self-sacrifice?

There fell, too, in this battle Captains Phinney, W. B. Lyles and J. W. Walker; and Sergeant- Major Beverly W. Means, Librarian of the South Carolina College, was mortally wounded.

2
 * Vol. XIII, Southern Historical Society Papers, p. 119.