NP: June 15, 1864 Raleigh Confederate: Cold Harbor, 28th N. C. Regt., June 9

Editor’s Note: This article was transcribed by Brett Schulte.

For the Confederate.
Cold Harbor, 28th N. C. Regt.,
June 9, 1864.

Editors Confederate: That our friends at home may know of our whereabouts, I write you a short communication. We are here in line of battle and have been for eight days. The enemy has been very quiet for the last few days. They attacked out lines in massed columns on the 3rd inst., but were driven back with great slaughter. Since that time they have made a few weak attacks, but the most of the fighting has been confined to skirmishing and artillery. It is thought now that Grant will move again; that he can’t get his men to fight us. Grant got permission to bury his dead the other day, a a big job he had of it, for they were thick in many places. The enemy is said to have lost over 10,000 at this place, while our loss will not exceed 1000. This looks hardly true, but if you had been here to see, you would not doubt it. The enemy never has been so severely punished as in this campaign; their dead lay from here to the Wilderness battle ground, thousands of them, rotting on the battle fields unburied. Grant certainly is one of the most unfeeling Generals in the world.

The 28th Regt., N. C. has done her part well in the great destruction of our common hateful enemy–officers and men never acted better. Not an officer has been from his post, nor any one of the men taken up for that bad practice, straggling. The regiment has been twice complimented on the battle field by our General for its good behaviour. It has been led and commanded by the brave and gallant Col. W. H. A. Speer; through all the campaign he has had no field officer to help him; he has acted most gallantly in all the battles; has been in command of the Regiment for over eleven months without any assistance except Adjt. Folger, who is as good an officer as any in the service. We mourn the loss of some of our best officers and men. Capt. Clark, Lieuts. Edwards and Costner killed. Capt. Bohannon and Lieut. Sudner[?] and Andrews, missing. Lts. Eudy, Stone, and Rhyne wounded. The loss of the Regiment from the 5th of May to the present, in killed wounded and missing, is 260. The Regiment went into the battles of the Wilderness on the 5th of May, and has been fighting and under fire every day since, except four. I have been in the army for near three years and in nearly all the battles, and I have never before seen such desperate fighting and such slaughter of Yankees. If Grant will only keep pitching his men against us, he will soon have to go back home, and as some of his men say that he said “he would fight Lee till his men were so near all killed that they could cross the Rappahannock river on a leg.” Grant will never get his army to Richmond, unless it goes there under guard of rebel bayonets, as about 8,000 have already done.

We are getting more rations than we can eat, and we are all in very good health, and in the best of spirits. Through the goodness of an ever gracious Providence and by His help, we will give the invader an awful defeat, and soon see the sweet dove of peace once more spreading her lovely wings over the sunny South; and you may put down the 28th Regiment with its commander (Col. Speer) and Lane’s Brigade, as doing what all good soldiers do, their duty.

I am, very respectfully, your obt. servt.,

J. R. C.

Conservative and Charlotte Democrat please copy.¹

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