Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/67

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both of officers and men, changes in the roster of officers m ninerous.

It has been impossible at this late day to procure of the killed. \\otmded or missing in these- battles anything like full or correct reports. The aggregate was considerable, and the casualties told the story of the tierce struggles in which the command was engaged. but access to the reports cannot IK- had.

George W. Lytle succeeded to the captaincy of Company A: Henry A. Chambers was, on December loth, 1862, appointed to the command of Company C; Columbus H. Dixon was made captain of Company G on November ijth, 1862, in the place of Captain Rufus Roberts; Charles F. Connor, on February ist, 1863, succeeded Cap- tain W. W. Chenault, of Company I, and George L. Phifer became captain of Company K, in the place of Peter Z. Baxter, on July 24th, 1863; changes occasioned by the losses of 1862. Correspond- ing changes ensued in the other grades of company officers. From Richmond the scene of action was speedily transferred by General Lee to the Potomac and beyond; and through the Valley, by Har- per's Ferry, to Sharpsburg, or Antietam, the command followed that great figure in our military history. Returning to Virginia, it participated in the battle of Fredericksburg, beginning December nth, 1862, where it took position on the Plank road, and during the four days that the fighting there continued was subjected to heavy cannonading and some infantry fighting, several officers and men being killed and wounded; but the heaviest fighting was on the right of our lines and by other commands.

After this battle the Forty-Ninth remained in winter quarters near Fredericksburg until January 3d, 1863, when it was marched, by the Telegraph road, to Hanover Junction, thence to Richmond, and from there to Petersburg, which it reached on the evening of the 7th, and remained until the iyth, when it left for eastern North Carolina.

From this time on until the spring of 1864, the regiment, with the Twenty-fourth, Twenty-fifth, Thirty-fifth and Fifty-sixth regiments, composing General M. W. Ransom's brigade, protected the line of the Wilmington and Weldon railroad from those two terminal points, and that of the road from Goldsboro to below Kinston; being con- stantly on the move, appearing one day at the other end of the line from that at which they were the day before, and vigilently guarding the territory of eastern North Carolina from which such abundant