'Follow me'-Hamilton Brown, 1st N.C.S.T.

Military Images, May/Jun 2003 by Williams, Robert A

Wounded 13 times, Hamilton Brown was one of the South's finest regimental commanders.

Liquor flowed freely and there 1/2 doz fights." Thus one Southern rustic described a late April 1861 patriotic rally in the mountain town of Wilkesboro, North Carolina, aimed at garnering recruits to defend a newly forming Confederacy. Two community leaders of pronounced stature, Montfort Sydney Stokes, Jr., and James Brown Gordon, led the gathering. Their efforts produced an exceptional company of men known as the Wilkes Valley Guards or Wilkes Volunteers. When the unit left Wilkesboro on May 27 with Stokes at its captain and Gordon as first lieutenant, a proud member asserted that, "The company on that day numbered 110 and nearly every man was over six feet tall." Also named first lieutenant was Gordon's younger stepbrother, 23-year-old Hamilton Allen Brown.

At Warrenton, North Carolina, on June 3 the Wilkes Volunteers officially became Co. B of the newly formed 1st North Carolina State Troops. The 1st was one of ten regiments of "State Troops" authorized by law, whose term of service was to be for three years or the duration of the war. Confederate staff officer McHenry Howard of Maryland, who would later come to know the 1st well, thought the organization exhibited "something of the esprit, called by some 'uppishness,' of regulars."

Naval Academy graduate "Sydney" Stokes, judged by one observer to be "a splendid officer, well prepared to drill in regimental or brigade maneuvers," became the regiment's first colonel. When Gordon soon transferred to the cavalry arm, Brown assumed the vacant captaincy of Co. B, to rank from May 16. For the balance of the war, Brown's distinguished service career would be inextricably linked with the fortunes of the 1st.

Known to his intimates as Allen, Brown was born at Oakland in Wilkes County, North Carolina, on September 25, 1837, the second son of a marriage between Hamilton Brown and widow Sarah Gwyn Gordon. His grandfather was a participant in the Revolutionary War battle of King's Mountain. Brown attended the U.S. Naval Academy as a member of the Class of 1858 but did not graduate.

When North Carolina seceded, Governor John W. Ellis called on the Wilkes County native to help train recruits. This must have proved interesting, since Brown spoke with a pronounced stutter. One member of the 1st irreverently described a command from Brown as sounding like, "A-a-a-a - damn - a-a-a - damnit - pst-pst-pst - a-a - forward, Company B!" His verbal orders often were said to be unintelligible to an untrained ear. However, subsequent events would soon show that Brown's speech impediment did not diminish his ability to lead men in battle.

In the 1st's baptismal engagement at Mechanicsville, Virginia, June 26, 1862, the regiment was brutally mauled while assaulting strongly fortified Union positions along Beaver Dam Creek. Stokes was mortally wounded and all other field officers either killed outright or severely injured. Enlisted casualties amounted to more than 150. While witnesses described initial Southern efforts to reform after the battle as "pathetic," Brigade commander Roswell Ripley noted in his official report, "Captain A. Brown, of the 1st North Carolina, rallied the troops of his regiment, with other officers ... and led [them] until relieved...." In subsequent battles of the Seven Days, particularly at Malvern Hill, the young captain again distinguished himself. Brown earned promotion to lieutenant colonel, to date from July 8. That same month he traveled to Raleigh to acquire 300 new conscripts for the regiment, men, he said, who "proved to be excellent material for soldiers, brave and willing...."

Brown capably led the revitalized 1st through the subsequent Maryland Campaign. The Tar Heels escaped harm's way at South Mountain but sustained losses of more than 50 percent on the fringes of the Miller Cornfield at Sharpsburg. At Fredericksburg in December, Brown and his regiment played a support role in the Confederate third line of battle and incurred only minor injury from long range fire.

In early 1863 the 1st was reassigned to a newly formed, mostly Virginia, brigade in what was called the old "Stonewall Division." It was a move that displeased Brown. Wishing to be in an all North Carolina unit, he later noted, "Trouble and discomfiture were necessarily entailed by such an arrangement.... We were often neglected and sometimes forgotten in the distibutions of army stores, clothes, provisions, etc." Perhaps of more importance to the young and ambitious officer, he further observed, "The field of promotion was also narrowed, and our achievements on the field frequently shared by others."

Yet the mixed brigade performed well enough at Chancellorsville. Brown led them briefly near the battle's end after successive commanders had fallen. It proved to be the 1st's bloodiest engagement of the war. "We captured piles of fat knapsacks and fatter Dutchmen," he boasted of the action. During Lee's second Northern invasion, the 1st gained further laurels and boots at Stephenson's Depot near Winchester.