April 23
On this day in 1864, Colonel Bryan Grimes (1828-1880) of the 4th North Carolina Infantry sat at his headquarters tent in Orange Courthouse, Virginia, and penned a somber letter to his young wife, Charlotte. The 35-year old officer–owner of “Grimesland,” one of the largest plantations in Pitt County along the Tar River, and the 57 enslaved persons who worked it–had seen much hardship in the war. But that afternoon brought a particularly wrenching moment–his meeting with three condemned soldiers from his regiment. Grimes had married 23-year old Charlotte Emily Bryan seven months earlier. Consumed by worry since losing his first wife to illness in 1857, Grimes opened his April 23 letter, “I feel sad and depressed tonight because I feel something has occurred to you.” Her letters had not arrived in a week, leaving him unsettled by “the fear [of sickness] that continually haunts me.” Then he shifted to the grim encounter of that afternoon, when J.F. Owens, Roberts Sparks, and William W. Wyatt–who were sentenced to be shot for desertion–pleaded for their lives. Grimes related, “it was heartrending to listen to their piteous appeals for mercy and soliciting interference on their behalf, if not for a pardon at least for a suspension of their executions for a while.” Grimes told them “with a heavy heart” that he could not interfere, and then shared some words that did not bring them any comfort. He forthrightly told them that he believed “that the good of the service absolutely demands the infliction of the severest penalties of the law to prevent desertion.” Five days later, the three men were executed, never to see their families again. Meanwhile, Grimes (who would soon be promoted to Brigadier General) survived the war, returned home a celebrated Confederate hero, and built a family with Charlotte at Grimesland, where they raised ten children together.
Photo: Bryan and Charlotte Grimes
Sources:
Bryan Grimes to Charlotte Grimes, April 23, 1864, Bryan Grimes Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC; Warner, Generals in Gray (1959), 120-121; General Bryan Grimes Monument site; 1860 U.S. Census: Pitt County.
