North Carolina’s Highlander Loyalty

North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial
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Brigadier General William MacRae (of Wilmington) and his North Carolinians cited below won great distinction in the Army of Northern Virginia, and regular commendation from General Robert E. Lee.

At Ream’s Station in August 1864: “The artillery fire of [Col. William J.] Pegram swept the enemy forces before the brigades advanced late in the afternoon, charging up to the Northern earthworks and fighting hand to hand---ending with a full rout of the enemy. MacRae had instructed Lt. W.E. Kyle, and his sharpshooters to concentrate upon the Northern artillery batteries firing at his forces, thus eliminating this threat. Once captured, the guns were turned upon the fleeing enemy by Captain W.P. Oldham of Wilmington and his men of Company K of the 44th North Carolina who opened a devastating fire.

“In a moment of panic our troops gave way,” a Northern colonel wrote [and] soldiers either threw themselves on the ground in surrender or fled across the railroad. Never in the history of the Second Corps had such an exhibition of incapacity and cowardice been given, a Northern soldier asserted. Author James Robertson’s states in his “A.P. Hill, Story of a Confederate Warrior” that “of the 2700 [Northern] casualties, 2150 had surrendered on the field…in addition, the army had lost 9 cannon, 3100 small arms and 32 horses. [Northern General] Gibbon was so humiliated by the rout at Ream’s Station that he submitted his resignation from the army.”

North Carolina’s Highlander Loyalty:

“When the troubles between North and South were gathering to a head in 1860, the Highlanders, with their conservative instincts, were almost to a man opposed to secession. But, taught to believe that their allegiance was due primarily, not to the federal government but to the State, no sooner did North Carolina go out, that they, with Highland loyalty, followed; and no men crowded to the front more eagerly, or fought more valiantly or more desperately to the bitter end.

Almost every man of those I met had served in the Confederate Army, and had left dead brothers or sons on the battlefield. Others, following the example of those who had left Scotland after the downfall of the Stuarts, and America after the triumph of the Revolution, had left the States altogether, and gone off to Mexico.

Amongst those I found at Wilmington was one who was a fine specimen of the material that the Highlands have given to Carolina, a spare, dark-visaged, soldierly fellow – Gen. William MacRae – whose personal valor and splendid handling of his troops in battle had caused him to be repeatedly complimented by Lee in general orders.

He seemed to belong to a fighting family. His eight brothers had all been in the army or the navy. Their father, Gen. Alexander MacRae, had fought in the war with England in 1812, and, on the outbreak of the War Between the States, though then a man of seventy years of age, again took the field, and commanded what was known as MacRae’s battalion. He was the grandson of the Rev. Alexander MacRae, minister of Kintail, two of whose sons fell fighting for the Pretender at Culloden. The others emigrated to North Carolina, and one of them, Philip, who had also served in the Prince’s army, cherished so deadly a hate of the English in consequence of the atrocities at Culloden, that he would never learn the English language, but spoke Gaelic to the day of his death. The family settled in Moore County, which is part of what is still called the “Scotch Country.”

(Chronicles of the Cape Fear, James Sprunt, Edwards & Broughton, 1916, pp. 126-127)
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North Carolina’s Highlander Loyalty