Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/29

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di>tini;uisli<-d dentist of that clay) and old Paul Michaux, of the First Company of Richmond Howitzers they undertaking to conceal us on the train until it started and to secure our enrollment in the com- pany when we arrived both of which undertakings they most skil- fully and faithfully performed.

FINE GUNNER AND FIGHTER.

I saw but little of Beers after this. Just when he joined the army I cannot say, but I know that it must have been some time before the battles around Richmond in the early summer of 1862; for, on the battlefield of Malvern Hill, I met some of the men of the " Letcher Artillery" Greenlee Davidson's company, to which he belonged who told me that my "Yankee" was the finest gunner in the battery and fought like a Turk.

Between Malvern Hill and Chancellorsville I saw Beers perhaps two or three times I think once in Richmond, shortly after his wife and children and my mother and sisters arrived from the North.

I have seldom seen a better looking soldier. He was about five feet eleven inches in height, had fine shoulders, chest and limbs, a handsome, manly figure, carried his head high, had clustering brown hair, a steel grey eye and a splendid sweeping mustache. Every now and then I heard, from some man or officer of his battery, or of Pegram's Battalion, some special commendation of his gallantry in action; but, he being in the Third Corps and I in the First, we seldom met. I am confident Tom Brander, John and Jim Tyler, Ferriter, and other battle-scarred veterans of Pegram's Battalion, stand ready to vouch for Beers as the equal of any soldier in the command, and some of them tenderly recall him as a good and true soldier and follower of Jesus Christ as well as of Robert Lee. I am told he was in the habit of holding religious services with the men of his battery on every fitting occasion services which they highly appreciated.

Just after the battle of Chancellorsville I was in Richmond, for what purpose I cannot now recall, unless it was that I had recently received an appointment in "engineer troops," and visited the city in connection with my commission and orders. I am unable to recall the details, but I was notified to meet poor Beers's body at the train. General Lindsay Walker, learning that he had been killed on the 3rd of May, and buried upon the field, had the body exhumed and sent to me at Richmond. It is strange how everything con-