Lenoir Rhyne College - Hacawa Yearbook (Hickory, NC)

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□ I -3 W — in had thrown myself on the ground from sheer exhaustion, and was talking to Captain Morris, who was in the same attitude. I turned my face from him to speak to my men, when 1 felt an excruciating pain in my leg. I said to him, in my natural voice, ' Captain Morris, my leg is broken by a musket-ball. ' Very soon after I felt another blow upon the same leg, and I said to him, again in the same tone, ' I am wounded again in the same leg. ' After finishing the conversa- tion — commenced before I received the second wound, which shattered both bones of my leg — he was summoned away, and I dragged myself about ten steps or more to a place a little more elevated than the fence at which we had been fighting, thinking there would be a better chance of my being found. While there, I had sand thrown over my face various times by musket-balls which struck the ground near my head, while the shells from the enemy ' s battery which was enfilading our line passed in fearful proximity to my body- I felt a wonderful degree of calmness and resignation to my fate in this alarming sit- uation. I thought that if the wounds I had already received did not prove fatal, it was very probable that 1 would be struck again, and killed; but I felt that I. was in the hands of a merciful God, and he would do with me what was right. In a few hours one of my men found me, and with the assistance of three others bore me oft on my blanket, stretched between two fence-rails, to a house about a quarter of a mile distant, and laid me on a narrow porch, which was so crowded with the wounded that there was only room for me at the entry, and my wounded leg was often struck by passers-by, to my great torture. Next morning I was carried on my stretcher for nearly a mile, and laid on the ground in an old field, with other wounded, to await surgical aid, which could not lie obtained until September 3, when, to my great relief, a surgeon amputated my leg. In another part of his diary, he says: The life of a soldier is calculated in many respects to have a hardening influence on the heart, but somehow it seemed to soften mine. When in that hard campaign 1 saw the sufferings of my men, and thousands of others; their weary gait; their bare and bleeding feet; and their heroic patience, my heart was touched to the core, and 1 often found the tears unconsciously coursing down my cheeks. . . . At the battle of Cedar Run, I was constantly witb my men. encourag- ing them and assisting them, and others whom I knew, to load. etc. They were so worn out by the march and the tight that, although much exhausted myself. I had to assist two of my men in the last charge through the cornfield, by having them to lean on my shoulder for awhile. m h 1

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CLASS OFFICERS

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Dl us Other extracts from his diary might he given, which show not only his unswerving devotion to duty, but his exceeding gentleness of nature. After the close of the War, he turned to peaceful and more con- genial pursuits. He lived for several years in Haywood County. From that place his duty called him to Watauga County, where he lived until his death. Under the very shadow of Grandfather Mountain he loved to abide, and among the noble-hearted people of that mountain section he was best known and appreciated. In 1883, he was elected a member of the State Legislature from Watauga County, and his grateful constituents would have continued thus to honor him but for his absolute refusal longer to continue in public office. He preferred a quiet, unobtrusive life among his own people, where his large- hearted beneficence could find ample scope. Xo man, perhaps, has ever done so much for the people of Watauga as Walter Waightstill Lenoir. He was to them at all times a wise counsellor, a true friend, an unfailing helper. His place cannot soon be filled. A generous, sympathetic Christian life — who can tell its influence ? Say not his work is clone, No deed of love and goodness ever dies, But in the lives of others multiplies : Say, It is just begun. The name Lenoir College was chosen in honor of Captain Lenoir, who donated the splendid campus of twenty acres, together with thirty-six acre-lots surrounding the same. DE ID Eight