North Carolina Patriots of ’61: J. P. Little

North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial
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North Carolina Patriots of ’61: J. P. Little:

“J.P. Little enlisted in Company C [28th Regiment], at Newton on August 13, 1861. He was at this time only sixteen years of age, and the examining officer, thinking the boy too young to enlist, refused to accept him at first but through persistent pleadings of the youth to fight for a cause that he thought was just, he was at length accepted. Even at this early age he was cultivated to no small degree. His manners were frank and candid, and the more intimately he was known, the better he was beloved. Never was he known to shrink from any toil, however painful, nor quail before any danger.

He had a high regard for his superior officers, and more still for the commission which he filled, as exemplified in an anecdote told be one of his comrades. At the Battle of the Wilderness when the soldiers had become somewhat routed, in order to rally them again the brave Captain Lovell reached up to shake the flag that Little was carrying, but the fearless ensign, reaching for his pistol, gave the Captain to understand that he was man enough to carry that flag and for him to let it alone.

He was in many of the principal battles of the war, namely, Hanover Court House, Seven Days…around Richmond, Cedar Run, Second Manassas…Oz Hill, Harper’s Ferry, Sharpsburg…Shepardstown, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spottsylvania Court House. At the Battle of Frazier’s Farm he received a wound in the thigh, and was also wounded at Chancellorsville, and Spottsylvania Court House. At the latter place he was in the famous Bloody Angle and was taken a prisoner here. Later he was sent to Elmira, New York, where he was held during the remainder of the war.

He returned home in the summer of 1865, and then completed his education. He is now a merchant in Hickory.”

(The Catawba Soldier of the Civil War, George W. Hahn, Clay Printing Company, 1911, pp. 174-175)

North Carolina Patriots of ’61: J. P. Little