Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/64

56 of two soldiers of the Black Eagle Company, Captain Carter B. Harrison and Private Jesse Barker.

Captain Harrison, representing, as he did, to the highest degree, the intelligence, culture, wealth and chivalry of the South. He was a soldier and a patriot by birth. With these natural endowments he had been thoroughly trained at the Virginia Military Institute. He organized the Black Eagle Company and mustered it into service, but soon afterwards was promoted Major of the Eleventh Virginia Volunteers. At Bull Run, Va., 1 8th of July, 1861, the enemy made an attack on his regiment from the opposite side of the stream. Major Harrison asked permission to dislodge them. It was granted. He, with the Jeff Davis Guard, of Lynchburg, Va., charged and drove the enemy from their position. Major Harrison fell mortally wouned, living only a short while, thus exemplifying in life and death all the characteristics of his grand and glorious ancestry, having filled every station in life to which he had been called, according to his highest standard.

Jesse Barker, the counterpart as a soldier, was of humble and obscure parentage, possessing no earthly comforts unless it was the battered and faded Confederate uniform which wrapped his body, serving as a winding sheet for his burial, he having been buried where he fell.

Jesse Barker had seen more than a score of his comrades killed and wounded carrying the flag of his regiment. He saw Boston killed at Williamsburg, Va. He saw the entire color guard, consisting of a sergeant and eight corporals killed and wounded at Games' Mill, Va. He witnessed the same fatality among his comrades four days afterwards at Frayser's Farm, Va., when the entire color guard was again shot down. He saw the head of Garland Sydnor, of Lunenburg county, Va., one of the noblest soldiers in the army, crushed to a pulp with a cannon shot, bearing aloft this same emblem of liberty and love. With these facts before him, knowing, as he did, that to be the standard bearer of the regiment made his killing or wounding inevitable,