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[325] where General Branch could be found, replied in a voice choked with emotion: ‘He has just been shot; there he goes on that stretcher, dead, and you are in command of the brigade.’ Two days after, Lane's brigade, with Gregg's and Archer's, constituted the rear guard of the army in crossing the Potomac. The brigade hailed with delight Lane's promotion to brigadier-general, which occurred November 1, 1862, christened him their ‘Little General,’ and presented him a fine sash, sword, saddle and bridle. He was at this time twenty-seven years old. In his last battle under Stonewall Jackson, Chancellorsville, he and his North Carolinians fought with gallantry and devotion. At Gettysburg he participated in the first shock of battle on July 1st, and on the 3d his brigade and Scales' formed the division which Trimble led up Cemetery hill. In this bloody sacrifice half his men were killed or wounded, and his horse was killed under him. Subsequently he was in command of the light division until the 12th, when it was consolidated with Heth's. During 1864 he was in battle from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor. At Spottsylvania Court House, at the critical moment when Hancock, having overrun the famous angle and captured Johnson's division, was about to advance through this break in the Confederate line, Lane's brigade, stationed immediately on the right of the angle, rapidly drew back to an unfinished earthwork, in which he flung two of his regiments, while the other three were posted behind them to load and pass up rifles to the front line. Thus a terrible fire was opened upon the Federals, which checked their triumph and permitted Gordon's and other divisions to arrive in time to hold the line. At Cold Harbor General Lane received a painful wound in the groin which disabled him for some time, but he was with his brigade at Appomattox. After the surrender he made his way, penniless, to his childhood home, and found his parents ruined in fortune and crushed in spirit by the loss of two brave sons, members
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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