Heroe* of the old Camden District, S. G. 25
the Seventeenth regiment fought in the battle of Kinston.* I can find no report of its losses.
From North Carolina the brigade was sent to reinforce Vicksburg, and reported to General Joseph E. Johnston at Jackson on the 3d June.f but did not reach Vicksburg. It was engaged in some skir- mishing at Jackson, but nothing more. From Mississippi the brigade was ordered to the Isle of Hope, near Savannah, where it was en- camped during the winter of i863~'64. From Savannah this regi- ment was sent to Charleston, where it furnished its details for the garrison at Fort Sumter, and thence it rejoined the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of 1864 under the command of General W. S. Walker.
Stephen Elliot, who had so nobly defended Fort Sumter and fought it to the water's edge, was appointed brigadier-general, and assigned to the command of this brigade. It was while under his command that the fearful battle of the Crater took place on the 3d July, 1864, in which, as Colonel McMaster justly observed in his address at Chester on the I3th August, 1879, it seldom falls to the lot of a regi- ment to act such a conspicuous part in saving an army as did the Seventeenth on that occasion. \
Colonel McMaster is fully justified by General Humphreys, the distinguished Federal officer in that fair and admirable history of the Virginia campaign of 1864-' 65, published in the Scribner Series, in the estimate of the important services rendered by the Seventeenth regiment under his command on that terrible occasion. ||
One- half of the regiment was lost at Fort Steadman on the 25th March, 1865. Colonel McMaster and twenty officers were captured. The remainder fought at Five Forks, where Lieutenant-Colonel Culp was captured. The three remaining officers of the regiment Major Avery, Adjutant Fant and Captain Steele, of Lancaster were each wounded on the day of the surrender.
RION'S BATTALION.
Colonel Rion, as we have seen, went into the service first as colonel of the Sixth. He resigned this command in June, 1861, but he could
- Rebellion Records, Series i, Vol. XVIII, p. 112.
^Johnston's Narrative, p. 190.
J Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. X, p. 119.
|| The Virginia Campaign 1864-65. Humphreys, p. 256.
