Written by J. Phillip Harris – Great Great Grandson of Lewis William Carter.

When I was young, MY grandfather, Lea Roy Carter, often told me an old family tale about HIS grandfather passed down to him from his father, James Thomas Carter. Supposedly, when James Carter was about seven years old during the Civil War, he remembered the soldiers coming to take his father away while he was out in the fields. They took him off to war and he was never heard from again and nobody ever knew what happened to him. Now, that story always haunted me. As a boy, I just could not imagine how someone could be taken away like that and what it must have felt like never knowing where he went or what he did. My grandfather did eventually find his grandfather’s name on a list of those killed at Gettysburg, but that was years after his own parents had died. My grandfather challenged me, if I ever got the chance, that I should try to find out what really happened to his grandfather. Well, I did, but the answers came after my grandfather had already died.

Lewis William Carter enlisted as a private in Company C of the 52nd North Carolina Regiment on February 27th, 1862. Union troops had occupied the coastal town of Elizabeth City and the citizens of the farms and towns at the upper end of the Albemarle Sound felt threatened. Initially most of the men thought they were only enlisting in a militia force to protect their own homes. Things changed almost immediately. They were first sent to Raleigh in June 1862 to organize and train at Camp Mangum. But then, in July 1862, they were sent by train up to Richmond where the regiment became part of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. There they continued to train and dig trenches to set up the defenses around Richmond. In November 1862 they marched from Richmond to Franklin, Va. to guard a bridge over the Blackwater River. It was there that they first engaged the enemy in a successful defense of the bridge. From there the regiment began a sweep through eastern North Carolina that lasted through the entire spring of 1863. They were assigned to Gen. James Johnston Pettigrew’s brigade with three other regiments and saw action in small battles at Goldsboro and Washington, NC. In May 1863 they were again sent by train back up to Richmond to guard bridges near Hanover Junction in the defenses below Fredricksburg. In mid June, Lee began his campaign into Pennsylvania by moving over the mountains and following the Shenandoah Valley north across the Potomac. Pettigrew’s Brigade brought up the rear as the Army of Northern Virginia moved north, while to the east of the mountains, the Union forces shadowed their movements. The men of the 52nd North Carolina crossed the Potomac on the 24th of June, 1863.

It was on the morning of July 1st, 1863 that some units of the 52nd Regiment were sent into Gettysburg to secure a supply of much needed shoes. On the way down the road, they ran head-on into the lead cavalry elements of the Union forces. The Battle of Gettysburg had begun. On the afternoon of July 1st, Pettigrew’s Brigade was the main force that went up against the Union troops on Seminary Ridge. The Union line broke and the Union forces retreated back through the town to take up defenses along Cemetery Hill to the south of the town. On the 2nd of July, Pettigrew’s Brigade was held in reserve and did not see action while the battle reached a stalemate. On the afternoon of July 3rd, the grand assault known as Pickett’s Charge took place up Cemetery Hill with 15,000 Confederate troops advancing on the Union lines which were set up behind a stone wall along the top of the rise. The 52nd Regiment was located at the turn in the wall known as The Angle. They had to advance just inside the pocket of The Angle. Lewis William Carter was wounded somewhere just in front of the wall. According to military medical documents, he received two gunshot wounds, one to the shoulder and one to the abdomen. The Confederate assault failed and the Battle of Gettysburg was soon over with Lee’s army retreating back to the South leaving thousands of dead and wounded.

Lewis Carter was taken prisoner and placed in the Union 3rd Army Field Hospital on the Schwartz Farm to the east of Gettysburg. The conditions were atrocious. Although he survived the initial trauma of his wounds, he slowly suffered and died from infections 24 days later on July 27th, 1863. He was buried in Yard B on the Schwartz Farm on a hillside overlooking Rock Creek in a marked grave. In the 1870s, all known Southern remains at Gettysburg were exhumed and sent back to Richmond. Yard B on the Schwartz Farm just happened to be where they started the exhumations. Lewis Carter was the 13th body to be exhumed out of the thousands that were sent back. His coffin was marked I-13. Unfortunately, when they reached Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, all of the Gettysburg dead were buried in a mass grave with no individual markings. Today, the site is a National Landmark with a very large pyramid monument honoring those who died at Gettysburg.

Still not answered was an explanation of the old family story. The official records showed that Lewis Carter had voluntarily enlisted and had plenty of time to prepare to leave home. I continued to research details of the battle, the regimental history, etc. Finally I discovered what appeared to be an explanation. In November 1862, when the 52nd Regiment was sent to Franklin, Virginia, the Gates County men of Company C were only 5-10 miles from home. Right at the end of November in that year there was a 14 inch snowfall that covered southeastern Virginia. A hard freeze set in that lasted most of December. The 52nd Regiment never received supplies or tents from Richmond and were sleeping out in the open with little food during this time. An old letter from one of the officers to his wife indicated that the morale was very low and, with many of the men being so close to home, some were just walking away and going home. It was then that I realized the memory of a seven year old boy was not that of his father’s initial leaving, but rather when the soldiers of his unit came to take him back to camp during that cold December. I began to understand who Lewis Carter really was. Here was a man who wanted nothing more than to be with his family. He did not own a large plantation, he never had any slaves. All he wanted to do was to protect what he had, his home and his family. Yet just seven months later he had the courage to go up that hill at Gettysburg into the face of a sure death. The Civil War was a turning point in our country’s history. The Battle of Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War. And the Confederate high tide in Pickett’s Charge was the moment of truth in the Battle of Gettysburg. It was the moment when everything hung in the balance. Lewis Carter was there at that moment and sacrificed his life. He is truly our family’s hero.

Lewis W Carter