During that time, the remaining troops in the assault came under heavy enemy fire and halted well short of the main Federal line. Major Toon reported that his men “were about to be flanked by a large force of the enemy, and seeing no appearance of reinforcements from other regiments of the Brigade, we were reluctantly compelled to abandon the guns and return to a position in the woods.” He further noted that their final withdrawal that day “was not effected without loss, as the enemy reached the battery in force very soon after we had commenced to retreat.”⁶

Private Hicks recalled that the order to fall back occurred so suddenly that he was almost left behind on the field. “Knowing there had been no forward movement on the part of our boys, I looked and saw our whole line had fallen back,” he remarked. “And, the smoke having risen in my front and right saw the enemy charge in a run towards the battery.” Their appearance left him no other choice than to retreat. Hicks noted that “they commanded me to halt, and, as I could not fly, I ran back and joined our lines at the charging point, at which position the regiment continued to fire.”⁷

Just before sundown, the rest of the brigade finally launched another assault against the battery. Lieutenant Vines E. Turner, the adjutant of the 23rd North Carolina, reported that his regiment was one of the first to emerge from the thick undergrowth that had obstructed their earlier advance. “This brought us in full view of a battery on our left, which opened upon us, as we went forward at the double quick down a little slope,” he remarked. From there, the men continued to press forward up the hill until “the enemy… broke and fled in great disorder through a dense swamp in their rear.”⁸

Although the day ended in a stunning Confederate victory, the cost to the 20th North Carolina was appalling, with more than 100 men killed or mortally wounded among its nearly 300 casualties. “Heavy as was this loss, no doubt a greater loss was saved to the division in its advance by this gallant attack,” Gen. D. H. Hill stated in his official report. “The temporary silence of the battery enabled the division to move up in fine style and turn the tide of battle in our favor.” General Garland noted that the enemy troops “broke and retreated, made a second brief stand, which induced my immediate command to halt under good cover of the road-side and return their fire, when, charging forward again, we broke and scattered them in every direction.”⁹

Following the battle, Iverson returned to convalesce at Wilmington where he was greeted as a hero. “Col. Iverson of the 20th is in town,” his former volunteer aide Thomas Rowland remarked in a letter to his mother. “He was wounded in the fight near Richmond. His regiment behaved with great gallantry. Lieutenant Colonel Faison of the same regiment was killed in a desperate charge.” Rowland described Faison “as a noble fellow & a universal favorite.” The fighting, though, was still far from over. “What a closely contested battle it has been & it seems not yet to be decided,” Rowland concluded.¹⁰

During Iverson’s absence, the 20th North Carolina once again sustained severe casualties in the futile attack on the Federal army along the James River at Malvern Hill on July 1. “My command was here ordered to charge battery, distant more than half a mile, through an open field, and fully exposed to a fire that seemed to sweep its surface with destructive missiles of every sort,” Maj. Toon wrote in his official report. After advancing about 300 yards across the field, the men from his regiment halted and fired on the enemy for nearly an hour before retreating. Toon reported that his command lost an additional “25 privates killed, 4 officers and 94 privates wounded.”¹¹

According to Pvt. Hicks, he and his comrades were shelled by several “massed batteries” and fired on from entrenched lines of infantry during the fighting there. Within minutes, the enemy fire cut down soldiers all along the line. “How any of us escaped alive is a mystery,” wrote the North Carolina private. “I witnessed full a score or more of my comrades fall quite near me, before we got near enough the Yankee lines to use our guns. We were repulsed, but the Yankees made no move to follow.” Hicks noted that “our loss in this engagement was fifty per cent.”¹²

For men who had only recently been on coastal duty in their home state, the long week of fighting outside Richmond provided a frightful introduction to the harsh realities of combat. Lieutenant Mercer insisted that “the horrors of war” he encountered during that time were beyond his ability to express in words. “My God may I never see such sights as I seen since I saw you,” he exclaimed in a letter to his sister. Mercer was struck most of all by the plight of his injured comrades. “The hospitals are crowded with wounded men,” he declared. “It is enough to shock the strongest heart on earth.” He openly admitted that he had “never expected to see such sights.”¹³

For Pvt. Foard, the most distressing moments on the Virginia peninsula came when the division’s “burial corps” began digging graves in the hours after the fighting ended at Gaines’ Mill. “I counted 255 dead bodies and the men engaged in the work told me they had buried 280,” he said. “At Cold Harbor at a little church near our line of battle converted into a field hospital,” continued the private, “I saw arms and legs and hands and feet that had been amputated and cast into a pile for burial which would have made a large wagon load.” Foard went on to note that even “the air was tainted everywhere with the scent of human blood.”

The exceedingly poor quality of the medical treatment the men received on the battlefield made the overall death toll in the regiment even worse. Private Foard marveled that anyone with a serious wound could survive. “The mortality among the wounded in the hospitals was immense,” he recalled. “The sultry July weather, the need of antiseptics, the inadequate sanitation and the insufficiency of the medical corps to meet the great demands upon them all conspired to that result.” Foard also discovered that even slight injuries could turn deadly when he observed that “Piemia carried off hundreds of strong men with only flesh wounds.”¹⁴

The men from the other four regiments in Garland’s Brigade also endured significant losses in the fighting that week. Some of the fiercest action took place at Malvern Hill. Private Leonidas Torrence from the 23rd North Carolina reported to his parents that it “was as hard a Battle as ever was Fought.” He pointed out that “the Balls fell around me as thick as hail for 2 or 3 hours.” Another private, Franklin L. Stuard of the same regiment, noted in a letter to his father that eight or nine men were killed there in his company alone. Worst of all was the aftermath of the battle, where he “saw a lot of men dead and a lot of them hurt, there arms and legs off and some of them dying while the doctor is operating on it.”¹⁵

Despite the heavy casualties, the bloody Seven Days’ fighting prevented the Federals from capturing Richmond and forced the Army of the Potomac many miles away to the James River and the protection offered there by the Federal navy. In response to unfounded rumors that the enemy was preparing to renew the attack, Pvt. Solomon McLean from the 23rd North Carolina boasted to his cousin that the outcome would certainly be the same if the enemy tried taking the city again. “They say They will have richmond or Hell is their home,” he proclaimed. “I fear Hell will be their home before they ever get it. God grant them a better place for it will be bad for them to miss richmond & get Hell both.”¹⁶

While its colonel recuperated from his wound, the 20th North Carolina remained in camp—just below Richmond along the York River—as part of the force assigned to keep watch on McClellan’s army at Harrison’s Landing. The troops there suffered from a renewed outbreak of disease, which was most likely aggravated by poor sanitation and the endless clouds of buzzing and biting mosquitoes in the swampy areas on the peninsula. One veteran from the regiment recalled that they “had a great deal of sickness from a very malignant type of camp fever.” He also noted that nine men in the regiment died in the hospital from disease during that period. “In addition,” he continued, “there were several in the hospital sick from fever who eventually recovered and returned to duty.”¹⁷

In late August, Garland’s entire brigade began moving north to rejoin the main part of Lee’s army for an expected engagement with the new Federal Army of Virginia led by Maj. Gen. John Pope. The North Carolinians, however, experienced numerous delays during their long trip. One veteran from the 23rd North Carolina recalled that the troops from their brigade reached the area where the Battle of Second Manassas took place “in time only to view the green plains strewn with the blue-coated dead, the living Yankees having fled in confusion in the direction of Washington.”¹⁸

By then, most of the bodies had already been gathered in large piles on the field in preparation for burial. “To that end they had collected from all parts of the battlefield and strewn along the road upon which we marched so that without extravagance one could have walked a mile and a half stepping from one dead body to another without touching the ground,” Pvt. Foard of the 20th North Carolina explained. “It was a horrible spectacle.” He vividly recalled that “under the hot sultry August weather they were in an advanced state of decomposition.”¹⁹

Lieutenant Turner of the 23rd North Carolina was also struck by the terrible sights he encountered on their arrival at Manassas. According to Turner, many of the corpses had been “crushed and mangled by the cannon wheels, which in the urgency of that fierce and prolonged combat had passed over them.” Private John Coghill from the same regiment reported in a letter home that the dead Yankees were strewn “all along for about 5 miles” across the battlefield. “I saw more ded men than I ever saw before,” he declared. “They smelt awfull bad.”²⁰

Despite the condition of the corpses, most of them were quickly stripped of all usable clothing and valuables. “Every single body had been denuded of its outer garments by negroes and camp followers,” Pvt. Foard observed. “And among them all I only saw one foot that was shod and that belonged to a poor wretch whose leg had been nearly severed above the knee by a cannon ball remaining attached to the body only by a small shred of flesh.” He noted with disgust that “the cavalry boot that was on it could not be taken off without taking the leg with it.”²¹

By the end of August, Col. Iverson had finally recovered enough from his wound to rejoin his regiment. Within days of his return, the troops from the Army of Northern Virginia began moving forward across the Potomac River into Maryland. While Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson captured Harpers Ferry, Virginia, the rest of Lee’s army advanced north toward Hagerstown. Following a brief halt near Frederick, Maryland, the men from D. H. Hill’s Division deployed along the gaps in the South Mountain range and served as the rearguard of the army.

On the morning of September 14, the mountain gaps held by Hill’s troops were attacked. As the shooting began, Hill sought out Garland’s Brigade, which was being held in reserve at Turner’s Gap. “The firing had aroused that prompt and gallant soldier, General Garland, and his men were under arms when I reached the pike,” Hill recalled. “I explained the situation briefly to him, directed him to sweep through the woods, reach the road, and hold it at all hazards, as the safety of Lee’s large train depended upon its being held.”²²

Under Garland’s direction, the troops from the brigade quickly moved into place along Fox’s Gap near the point where a country lane intersected the Old Sharpsburg Road. Their line of battle extended along the dirt lane as it curved to the southwest across the top of a steep ridge. To the rear of their position, the terrain sloped off sharply into a deep ravine. The surrounding area on the Daniel Wise farm consisted of thick laurel woods interspersed with small farm fields. A large force of enemy troops remained mostly out of view in the heavy forest directly opposite their position.²³

The fighting began about nine o’clock in the morning when the 5th North Carolina, located on the right of the line, pushed forward from the south edge of a cornfield directly into Federal troops posted in the woods on the side of the hill. “We found the growth very thick, so much so that it was impossible to advance in line of battle,” the 5th’s Col. Duncan K. McRae wrote in his official report. He noted that “the enemy’s skirmishers had advanced almost to the very edge of the woods nearest us, and, as we appeared at the edge, a sharp skirmish fire ensued.”²⁴

Captain Isaac E. Pearce, also a member of the 5th North Carolina, reported that the men in his company, which had been deployed as skirmishers, proceeded only a short distance into the woods before encountering “a strong force” of enemy soldiers on their flanks. The sudden appearance of the Federal troops brought the skirmishers from the 5th North Carolina to an immediate halt. “My men fired into the enemy who had gotten partly in my rear, the woods being so dense I could not see far,” he explained in a letter to his sister. Pearce noted that he immediately ordered his men “to retreat & rally upon the regt. which they did.”²⁵

While all that was going on, Iverson remained busy deploying the troops from the 20th North Carolina on the opposite end of the main ridge line near the intersection of the two roads. Within minutes, he began to hear the sounds of heavy gunfire on their right. The signs that a major fight was underway drew an immediate response from Garland. “At that time I was ordered by Gen Garland to move rapidly with my regiment toward that point,” Iverson recalled years later. He noted that “the firing seemed to be from Sharpshooters on a wooded mountain or hill on our right front.”²⁶

After directing Iverson’ troops to the front, Garland moved farther to the left along the main ridge line, where he held a hurried conference with several field officers from the brigade. As enemy fire began pouring into their exposed position, Lt. Col. Thomas Ruffin Jr. from the 13th North Carolina urged Garland to move to a safer position. “Just then I was shot in the hip, and as there was no field-officer then with the regiment, other than myself, I told him of my wound, and that it might disable me, and in that case I wished a field-officer to take my place,” recalled Ruffin. “He turned and gave me some order, which I have forgotten.” At that moment, Ruffin heard a loud groan and found Garland “mortally wounded and writhing in pain.”²⁷

Colonel McRae from the 5th North Carolina, whose troops were already heavily engaged with the enemy, quickly assumed command of the brigade. The first sign of trouble came when the 12th North Carolina on the far right of the line moved forward to join in the fight. That regiment numbered fewer than 100 men, many of whom were recent conscripts, under the command of an inexperienced captain. “At this moment I found that the raw troops on my right who had never been under fire, had no drill, and had but few officers, were breaking in some confusion, the rest of the line remaining firm,” McRae reported. “I immediately hastened back and rallied those retreating at our first position.”²⁸

General Hill later insisted that this “badly trained regiment” actually deserted from its position along the front lines. One soldier from the 12th North Carolina reported, however, that the troops left the field in response to a direct order that called for them to fire at the enemy and then fall back. “The order was obeyed, but the fire was returned so promptly, at close range, that the withdrawal was attended with confusion,” he explained. He noted that “thirty or forty” men from his regiment eventually reformed and moved into place directly alongside the 13th North Carolina.²⁹

About that time, some of the new recruits from the 5th North Carolina also began to falter and run to the rear. Their retreat down the steep ridge soon swept up nearly the entire regiment. “When the enemy came down upon us in force, our conscripts, being unused to the noise of musketry, became… panic stricken and broke into confusion (my Co. being on the left of our Regt and the last to break) and retreated back in a perfect rout with the enemy pressuring and harassing the back upon us,” Capt. Jacob Brookfield from that regiment openly admitted in his diary.³⁰

The situation proved just as desperate for the men in the 20th North Carolina on the left center of the brigade line. Iverson recalled that their position extended across a “level plateau” with a field in front that sloped down so steeply that he could not see the bottom. “I knew it was a bad position for we had no range and could not kill a man till he was within sixty yards,” he wrote. “I knew that my left would be enveloped unless some of our troops came into the interval.” Still, Iverson decided to fight right where he stood. “I knew I was going to catch it, as I had crept to the front on my hands and knees and seen the Federal army at the foot of the hills getting ready for the charge,” he explained.

As they awaited an attack, the regiment came under “a fierce fire” from a Federal battery along their front. Iverson responded by dispatching skirmishers under Capt. James B. Atwell in an attempt to flank the battery. The men quickly moved forward “in gallant style” and killed several of the enemy manning the guns. “The gunners were destroyed, and there is but little doubt that this battery of four pieces was for the day abandoned,” Col. McRae reported. Captain Atwell’s skirmishers, however, were forced back to the main battle line.

Within minutes of their return, Iverson’s troops along the ridge faced an overwhelming enemy assault. “In silence we waited with guns leveled over the low rail fence for the charge,” Iverson recalled after the war. “It came, the Yankees shouting as they advanced.” The men from his regiment quickly responded with a barrage of gunfire. “When I saw them, I gave the order to fire and the line in front went down,” Iverson explained. “Before the men could reload, the woods on my left when there was no fire swarmed with them.” He noted that “there was nothing to do but to get away or surrender.”³¹

The final attack against their position came so suddenly that most of the men from the 20th North Carolina got off only a single volley before they were overrun. Private Foard described the scene along their front as resembling something out of a dream. “As I pulled my trigger with careful aim, throwing a musket ball and three buck shot into them at not more than 20 yards distance, I could see dimly through the dense sulphurous battle smoke and the line from Shakespeare’s Tempest flitted across my brain: ‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here,’” he declared.

During that time, the enemy continued to press forward in a three-deep line of battle against both flanks of Iverson’s embattled regiment. “We resisted stubbornly retarding their progress in our front,” Pvt. Foard recalled. Even so, their line soon began to crumble under the weight of the Federal attack. “But being unopposed in the intervals between the regiments they advanced more rapidly and got around both of our flanks and were about to completely surround us, which compelled a hasty and precipitate retreat with the sure alternative of death or capture,” concluded Foard.³²

After a brief stand, a large part of the 23rd North Carolina on Iverson’s immediate right also broke into a full retreat from its position on the top of the ridge. “We stood the charge with coolness two successive times, but the third was too strong for us, and we were compelled to give way to their odds,” one soldier from the regiment explained in a letter to his hometown newspaper. He noted that they “scampered over the rough and rugged mountain the best we could and formed but did not again during the day engage in the fight, having lost some of our field officers.”³³

The Federal attack proved so devastating that almost the entire line was forced back in a near rout from behind the stone wall along the dirt road. “The enemy’s strength was overpowering and could not be resisted,” Col. McRae explained in his official report. “The Twentieth and a portion of the Twenty-third, finding themselves surrounded, were compelled to retreat, and this they did, under a severe fire, down the mountain side.” The losses in the brigade totaled 37 killed, 168 wounded, and 154 captured. Only the men from the 13th North Carolina on the far left of the line somehow escaped from the ridge in relatively good order.³⁴

With the enemy close on their heels, the withdrawal by the troops from the 20th North Carolina quickly turned into a mad scramble for safety as they descended the steep slope in their rear. Private Foard recalled that “it was a sharp run until we had extracted ourselves from the flanking columns.” Private James Ireland noted that the men “ran down that mountain or rather we went down it in leaps of forty feet or more” at a time. “We could hear that the Yankees were following us but they were not fast enough to catch up,” he commented. “Quite a number of us were lost from our proper commands.”

The panic soon spread to soldiers throughout the entire brigade. According to Pvt. Foard, the crowd of men fleeing from the crest of the ridge even included one of their chaplains. He could be easily spotted by the bearskin leggings he always wore. “The parson with a prescience born of more than mortal wisdom quickly discerned it was impossible for us to with stand the enemy’s onslaught, insured his own safety by flight,” Foard remarked. He noted that “those bear skin leggens could be seen bounding over the tops of the lauerl bushes like a kangaroo.”³⁵

Although his own men ran from the field, Iverson refused any responsibility for what had befallen his command. Instead, he placed the blame directly on the lack of leadership by Col. McRae after Garland was killed. “I ascribed the disaster to Garland’s death,” he wrote to D. H. Hill after the war. “For had he been alive, he would have known where to put and how to handle his troops.” He pointedly recalled that McRae was fleeing far ahead of him during the retreat. “I must have been the fastest runner for I caught up with him and together we went to the foot of the mountain,” Iverson said. “My regiment was scattered in every direction and it took the balance of the day to get them together.”³⁶

Similar events were repeated only three days later on September 17 at Sharpsburg, where the dispirited brigade once again faltered under the weight of a Federal attack. The problems began just as the enemy approached their position in the East Woods, directly north of a sunken road that later became known as “Bloody Lane.”

“The Federals advanced against us in dense lines through a corn field, which concealed the uniforms, though their flags and mounted officers could be seen plainly above the corn tassels,” Adjt. Turner from the 23rd North Carolina vividly recalled years later. He noted that “as the blue line became more distinct, approaching the edge of the corn field, which brought it in our range, we commenced to fire, and effectively held it in check.”³⁷

Although they had caught the Federal troops by surprise, the men stopped shooting almost immediately in response to a false report that they were firing into their own soldiers. That moment of hesitation resulted in disastrous consequences for the troops in the brigade. “Coming in sight of the enemy, the firing was commenced steadily and with good will, and from an excellent position, but, unaccountably to me, an order was given to cease firing—that General Ripley’s brigade was in front,” Col. McRae reported in his official account of the battle. “This produced great confusion.”³⁸

The first break in the line came soon afterward. Captain Thomas M. Garrett from the 5th North Carolina reported that, just as an enemy regiment approached from the flank, a company commander “came up to me, and in a very excited manner and tone cried out to me, ‘They are flanking us! See, yonder’s a whole brigade!’” Garrett immediately ordered him to keep silent and return to his post. “The men before this were far from being cool, but, when this act of indiscretion occurred, a panic ensued, and, despite the efforts of file-closers and officers, they began to break and run,” he said.³⁹

In a matter of minutes, the situation spiraled completely out of control. Captain Brookfield from the same regiment noted in his diary that the men were soon “thrown into confusion” and began to run from the field. Leading the way in the retreat were some of the conscripts from his own regiment. They were followed by many of the veteran soldiers. While admitting that “a greatest portion of our Regt acted cowardly and straggled off,” Brookfield insisted that there also “were a good many officers & men who joined other forces and fought gallantly all day.”⁴⁰

With about 10 men, Capt. Garrett attempted to make a last-ditch stand behind a nearby stone fence. “I observed, however, immediately, that all the brigade on the left was retreating in disorder, and had already passed the fence without halting,” he observed. “I retired with the few men behind the fence toward town. I could see no body of men of my regiment on the way.” After forming a group of stragglers into another line of battle, Garrett watched as the entire left of his line once more gave way. Only later in the day was he finally able to establish a stable line of defense.⁴¹

The unseemly race for safety in the rear quickly encompassed the rest of the brigade, including many of the men from the 20th North Carolina. “A force of the enemy appearing on the right, it commenced to break and a general panic ensued,” McRae acknowledged in his official report. “It was in vain that the field and most of the company officers exerted themselves to rally it.” Even those efforts failed to hold back the soldiers fleeing from the front lines. McRae admitted that “the troops left the field in confusion, the field officers, company officers, and myself bringing up the rear.” They fled from the field so quickly that the brigade lost only nine men killed, 42 wounded, and 33 captured. Some of the men reformed and moved into place in the rear along Bloody Lane.⁴²

Following their return to Virginia, the troops from the 13th North Carolina transferred to the brigade commanded by Brig. Gen. William Dorsey Pender. This change took place in mid-October after repeated requests from the regimental officers. The problems were largely fueled by friction with Col. McRae, the acting brigade commander since the fighting at South Mountain. The transfer further reflected the strong desire by the men to serve under Pender, who had begun the war as colonel of their regiment. One veteran recalled that “then the boys were happy, as we were again with our first colonel.”⁴³

Throughout that time, the soldiers from the other four regiments waited anxiously to see who would be selected to lead them as their new general. Although Garland hailed from Virginia, he had earned their devotion on the hard-fought battlefields of Gaines’ Mill, Malvern Hill, and South Mountain. Months after his death, an enlisted man from the 12th North Carolina still lamented that the “brigade misses him as much as a child misses his parent.” Another soldier in the brigade insisted that “a nobler man, braver patriot, or more beloved commander has not offered up his life on the altar of Southern liberty.”⁴⁴

The final decision on Garland’s successor was not long in coming. Although D. H. Hill recommended McRae and three other colonels for promotion along with Iverson, he closed with an “emphatic” statement that “Colonel Iverson is in my opinion the best qualified by education, courage, and character of any colonel in the service for appointment of brigadier-general.” Stonewall Jackson added a recommendation that “Colonel Iverson be the first promotion.” Lee forwarded the nomination to Richmond with a request for its “favorable consideration.”⁴⁵

Iverson’s appointment also attracted strong support from Confederate President Jefferson Davis. While the military commanders were largely influenced in their choice by McRae’s poor performance during the Maryland Campaign, President Davis was more than willing to provide full backing for the son of his longtime friend and political ally regardless of the circumstances. Taking no chances, however, the senior Iverson once again penned a letter to the president in which he urged favorable consideration for his son. With President Davis’ concurrence, young Alfred was formally appointed brigadier general on November 1, subject only to confirmation by the Confederate Senate.⁴⁶