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made a happy home—who was one of the most lovable of men—as we have served with him know—died in a New York hospital hundreds of miles from his beloved
Georgia.
Identified with the Cobb Legion.
His history was our history, his glorious record ours.
He was distinctly a creation of ‘The Cobb Legion,’ and they felt that indescribable attachment that men feel fur comrades who have bled with them on more than one hard contested field.
Though
General Thomas R. R. Cobb had organized the legion, he was a noted man in
Georgia before it was formed.
Though
Colonel William G. Deloney was our ‘
Chevalier Bayard,’
sanspeur et sans reproche, he fell at the zenith of his glory, September, 1863.
Though
General G. J. Wright was as brave and gallant as man could be, yet they all were older; we expected much of them.
It was not the same feeling we had for Pierce Young.
As
Colonel Baker, of the 1st North Carolina Cavalry, told him at
Middletown, Maryland, September 12, 1862, where, after a hard day's fight, incensed at some slighting remark that
Baker had made of a charge of ‘The Cobb Legion,’ he defied him to mortal combat then and there, ‘on horseback or on foot, with sabre or pistol, or any way he would fight.’
‘Why,
Pierce, you are nothing but a boy, you forget yourself; I came here to fight Yankees, not as good a soldier as you.’
Unmindful of the emphatic berating of his junior officer, conscious of his own courage, demonstrated in many a fierce encounter, instead of arresting him for disrespect, he laughed at the boyishness displayed even before his own regiment, who, with the older men of
Young's Regiment, always so regarded the affront.
Far from being perfect, we forgave his faults, even as a father would those of a spoiled child—for a spoiled child in many of his actions was Pierce Young, even to the day of his death.
A
West Point cadet, he promptly resigned on the secession of
Georgia, and offered his services to the
Confederacy, and was assigned to duty as adjutant to
Colonel Thomas R. R. Cobb, then organizing his legion ‘on the peninsular.’
Being a born soldier and with his military training, it was easy for him to infuse into that command, then consisting of six companies of infantry, four of cavalry and the afterwards famous Troup Artillery of
Athens, the
esprit du corps they were so noted for.
