By Judkin Browning, August 17, 2024
The 26th North Carolina, a legendary regiment in the Army of Northern Virginia, claims the distinction of having suffered the most casualties of any regiment in any one battle of the war–at Gettysburg. Members of Company F asserted that nearly their entire company was annihilated on July 1, 1863–as perhaps all but one member fell as a casualty in that afternoon’s fight. This is the story of one young man who marched and fell in that company on that fateful afternoon.
William Eli Setzer [1] was born in 1844 in the village of Copenhagen (the modern-community of Gamewell), about five miles southwest of the county seat of Lenoir, in Caldwell County, North Carolina. Fourth-generation Germans, Eli’s family had lived in the region for nearly a century, ever since his great-great grandfather, Jacob Adam Setzer, a doctor, had made the journey from the old country to the New World. Jacob had been born in Heidelberg, in the state of Baden-Württemberg in modern-day Germany, in 1730. After receiving training as a doctor, he traveled down the Rhine River in the summer of 1753, made his way to the port city of Rotterdam, and embarked on a ship for Philadelphia, where he landed on September 26. He wasted no time before setting out on the Great Wagon Road, which left Philadelphia and made its way west to the Shenandoah Valley, where it wound south into North Carolina. Jacob, the “Pioneer” (as family lore describes him) likely would have traveled west from Philadelphia to the tiny village of Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania, where he would have turned southwest to Hagerstown, Maryland, along the route. Perhaps he spent a night in Gettysburg, the site where his great-great-grandson would meet his fate 110 years later.
Eli grew up the second child (of nine) and oldest son on the modest, but prosperous farm of his father, William Alphonzo Setzer. He would have grown up going
to Lenoir often. While fewer than 300 citizens lived within its town limits, Lenoir—just a few miles south of the county’s geographic center—served as the market entrepôt and hub for social and political engagement for the county of nearly 7,500 residents (which included 1,088 slaves). Planters and yeoman farmers came to town to purchase goods at stores, trade with the merchants, conduct legal business at the courthouse, and attend church. Eli would have attended Belvoir or Finley High Academy, while his sister, Harriet went to either the Methodist-run Davenport College or the Presbyterian-influenced Kirkwood School.
William Alphonzo Setzer (1816-1899)
Photo found at Findagrave.com
When war broke out in the spring of 1861, the excitement became palpable in the county. The first two companies formed in April and left for Raleigh to train for war. Whether or not Eli debated joining those companies, we do not know. But he did not wait long. During the summer of 1861, Caldwell’s leaders worked to raise more companies by giving speeches throughout the county each Saturday. Residents embraced the martial spirit, holding picnics for the speeches and enlistment musters. On July 15, 79 men (including 17-year old Eli) enlisted in Rankin’s company, which called itself the “Hibriten Guards,” named after the 2,265-foot high mountain overlooking Lenoir. They elected 32-year-old Nathaniel Rankin, professor of mathematics at the Finley High School and son of a local Presbyterian minister, to be their captain. On July 31, Rankin’s company mustered to leave for Raleigh. In a public ceremony, Laura Norwood led twelve young girls in white dresses and blue ribbons to present a flag to the unit. The blue banner had been made from a silk dress of Rankin’s 14-year-old sister, Annie, while his 25-year-old sister, Ella Rankin Harper (wife of a future Confederate officer, George W.F. Harper), had decorated the flag with the state coat of arms. Norwood presented the flag to Captain Rankin “with few words fitly spoken,” according to one of the young girls in the procession. The company then marched to Hickory where it boarded a train for Raleigh.
The company trekked to Camp Crabtree outside of the state capital, where it trained and received its assignment as Companies F of the 26th North Carolina Infantry. The thrill of participating in the great adventure animated the men, and young Eli found validation of his entry into adulthood. From Raleigh, he boasted to his father, “i am much of a man.” Eli spoiled for a fight. In October, he wrote home, “we think we can whip six thousand yankees, the bois says they can whip five a peace. I think I can whip six myself.”[2]
Others were similarly excited about the fight, but less so about their leaders or their comrades. Eli’s cousin, Thomas W. Setzer wrote to his uncle in late August that if Captain Rankin “don’t dew beter tha is a bout ten of us going to leav and go som wher els.” In the camp, the yeoman farmer Thomas was surprised by behaviors that he had not witnessed in his social world back in Caldwell. “I hav bin in and at meny plases,” Thomas wrote, “but this is the god dams plase that i ever Seen… Som Sings, Som gits drunk, Som curses, Som plays cards” and the men generally partake in “all Sorts of devil ment that white men couda think of.” Thomas and many of the boys longed for home, especially the girls of Caldwell. In the summer of 1862, he wrote home to “tell the girls not to fancy [others] too mutch until myself and Eli come home, for they never seen good looking men until they see us.”[3]
Eli settled into a steady determination. He wrote in May 1862, “I expet to Stay in this war tele it eaneds.” The excitement of military service, and their conviction that the Lincoln administration would be bad for them, provided motivation to soldiers such as the Setzers. As the war dragged on, Eli longed for peace, but declared, “I never want it made in this world in the yankees favor. I had as Soon live in Africa as to live under A Lincon Government.”[4]
After leaving the training camp, the 26th North Carolina moved to help defend the coast near Beaufort, North Carolina, at the southern tip of the Outer Banks. Their first exposure to combat came on March 14, 1862 at New Bern. A Union expeditionary force led by General Ambrose Burnside defeated the Confederate troops defending that port city, and the men of the 26th barely escaped capture. They had been defending the far right flank of the Confederate line when their comrades’ hasty retreat cut them off from the road to New Bern. The regiment had to ferry across a large creek to escape capture, but under the leadership of their colonel, Zebulon Vance, and lieutenant colonel, Henry King Burgwyn, Jr., they succeeded.
Colonel Henry King Burgwyn, Jr. (1841-1863)
The regiment then moved to Richmond in June 1862 to help turn back the Union advance on the Confederate capital. It participated in the Battle of Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862, which Eli Setzer called a “very hard fite.” The main Confederate attack on the formidable Union position, defended by 31 cannons and numerous brigades of infantry, began about 4:00 in the afternoon, and quickly became a slaughter. Lt. Col. Burgwyn wrote that upon being ordered into the fight about 7:00 that evening, the regiment marched to the front in confusion through a forest, while enemy artillery shells “were bursting over our heads & cutting down trees & lopping off huge limbs.” They attacked in the fading twilight, so that they “judged of the enemy’s position solely by the flashes of his cannons & they were fast enough to leave little doubt.” Burgwyn counted at least 48 artillery discharges each minute. The regiment suffered relatively few casualties because the lateness and confusion of the attack prevented them from getting closer than 400 yards to the Union line. Eli Setzer walked over the battlefield the next day and found it “a terable Sight to see, mens arms and legs and head shot of[f].” He was frankly amazed to have survived: “they haven’t got me yet, But they come mity near it.”[5]
After the campaign, the regiment transferred to General J. Johnston Pettigrew’s brigade and Burgwyn was promoted colonel of the regiment after Zeb Vance was elected governor of the state in August. The 26th spent the next nine months trekking throughout eastern Virginia and North Carolina in attempts to threaten Union garrisons in the coastal regions of those states. The Caldwell men found the duty disagreeable. After “marching through mud and wading Creeks,” Eli Setzer wrote in the spring of 1863, “I had Rather be any whear Els.” He would soon get his wish; in May, General Robert E. Lee called the brigade to Virginia to join his army for its Pennsylvania invasion, putting it on the fateful road to Gettysburg.[6]
In the early afternoon of July 1, 1863, the 26th North Carolina arrived on the western outskirts of Gettysburg and their brigade received orders to drive the Army of the Potomac’s Iron Brigade off McPherson’s Ridge. The regiment began its charge, with Company F in the center, nearest the color guard carrying the flag. While marching forward, Eli would have witnessed his company comrade, Simeon Philyaw, a 23-year-old farmer from the western Caldwell mountains, rush out ahead of the unit and fire the first shot during the charge, which “drew the fire from the Federal lines,” their initial broadside “striking the ground about 15 paces in front” of the Confederates. The soldiers marched across 300 yards of oat fields and crossed a small brushy creek known as Willoughby Run, before advancing up the slopes of McPherson’s Ridge and into the teeth of the 24th Michigan’s fire.[7]
Eli marched beside his 20-year-old cousin, Joseph. (Another cousin, 23-year-old Thomas Setzer was fortuitously detailed for other duty that morning and missed the fight.) A bullet from one of the first volleys smashed Joseph’s knee while crossing the fields, but Eli made it across the creek and into the woods. As he stood within yards of the enemy line, multiple bullets slammed into Eli—at least two bullets hit one arm, and another tore a hole through his coat. But one minié ball struck near the head of one of Eli’s femurs (whether it was his left or right was never recorded), shattering the bone into hundreds of pieces. The wound was so high up the leg that amputation was impossible, and the bone had disintegrated so badly it could never be set and would become infected. Eli recognized immediately that this was a fatal wound. As the fight moved on, a disabled Eli was left in the detritus of the battle’s wake. None of the stretcher bearers either saw him or recognized he was still alive, and he lay on the field untended for hours. Eli was by no means alone on the battlefield, as nearly 600 of the 900 soldiers of the 26th North Carolina who participated in the attack fell, including Colonel Burgwyn, who died the same day of his wounds.
Don Troiani's painting, "Burgwyn at Gettysburg" depicting the 26th North Carolina's charge
After dark that evening, when all fighting had ceased for the day, Thomas frantically scoured the battlefield in search of his missing cousin. He found Eli in the woods suffering grievously and remained by his side through the night. Shortly after dawn, Thomas flagged down some medical orderlies and helped move Eli to a wagon to be carried to a field hospital. As Thomas put his cousin in the ambulance, Eli asked Thomas to “tell my folks how it was.” An emotional Thomas earnestly promised to do so. The wagon carted off the ashen Eli, as the disconsolate Thomas watched him ride over the horizon. Eli arrived at a field hospital where his cousin Joseph had his leg amputated above the knee the night before. The doctors quickly realized there was nothing they could do for Eli other than make him comfortable until the end came.[8]
On the morning of July 4, Lt. William A. Tuttle, an officer in the 22nd North Carolina and a family friend from Caldwell, visited the Setzers. Tuttle was dismayed to see Eli so hopelessly wounded. “I Dont think he will ever Recover,” Tuttle painfully admitted to Eli’s father, “his thigh was shivered close up to his hip.” Eli’s resigned acceptance of his fate impressed the lieutenant: “He told me that he was willing to Die and that he hoped to meet me in heaven.” Tuttle waited as late as he could before he had to leave to stay ahead of the approaching Union soldiers. “With a heavy heart I took their hands, and a tear fell from our eyes and we parted.”[9] Nineteen-year old Eli died that evening. His cousin Joseph died of infection two weeks later. After the war, Eli’s younger brother, Daniel Columbus Setzer, who was just two weeks past his 16th birthday when Eli died, named his first son, born in July 1876, Walter Eli, in honor of his brother who gave his life at Gettysburg. In an appendix to the tragic saga, that young Eli did not live beyond his first birthday.
Less than two months after the battle, on August 25, 1863, Eli’s cousin, Thomas–who had searched for and found him on the battlefield on the night of July 1–married Eli’s older sister, Harriet Emma Setzer. The couple died childless in the early 1900s, having shared a life together for forty years. Given the closeness of the Setzer family, one cannot help but think that they shared many stories (or perhaps the same few stories, many, many times) of Eli over the course of their lives, with each other and the dozens of nieces and nephews they entertained into their advanced years.
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* Some of this story was adapted from the previous publications:
Judkin Browning, “‘In Search of All That Was Near and Dear to Me’: Desertion as a Window into Community Divisions in Caldwell County during the Civil War,” in Steve E. Nash and Bruce E. Stewart, eds., Southern Communities: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the American South (University of Georgia Press, 2019)
Judkin Browning, “Reverberations of Battle,” Civil War Monitor (Summer 2017)
[1] NOTE: The surname is often spelled interchangeably as Setser or Setzer. Several previous
publications use Setser, including author Greg Mast, who wonderfully edited the family letters providing an invaluable service to scholars–and myself, who used Setser in previous publications, borrowing from Mast’s editing. However, now I have changed my interpretation. Setzer was the spelling of the surname on the tombstone of everyone in Eli’s family (For example, see the tombstones of Eli’s younger brothers, Daniel Columbus Setzer and Romulus Monroe Setzer). Since these were choices the family members made, presumably that is how they spelled their name, and I am honoring that choice.
[2] W.E Setser to W.A. Setser, August [n.d.], 1861, and October 14, 1861, in “The CSA Setser Letters- Part I,” found at: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wlsetzer/genealogy/fam_setzer/csa-letters-part-1.html, accessed December 8, 2023; also found at: http://www.26nc.org/Company-Front/Archive/2012/volume%2025,%20issue%201-2012.pdf; accessed December 8, 2023.
[3] T.W. Setser to unknown, August 25, 1861, in “The CSA Setser Letters—Part I”; T.W. Setser to W.A. Setser, June 17, 1862, in “The CSA Setser Letters—Part II” found at: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wlsetzer/genealogy/fam_setzer/csa-letters-part-2.html, accessed December 8, 2023.
[4] W.E. Setser to W.A. Setser, May 31, 1862, in “The CSA Setser Letters—Part II”; W.E. Setser to Father, mother, sisters, and brothers, April 20, 1863, in “The CSA Setser Letters—Part III,” found at: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wlsetzer/genealogy/fam_setzer/csa-letters-part-3.html, accessed December 8, 2023.
[5] W.E. Setser to W.A. Setser, July 16, 1862, in “The CSA Setser Letters—Part II”; Henry King Burgwyn, Jr. to “Dear Mother,” July 14, 1862, Burgwyn Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (hereafter SHC)
[6] W.E. Setser to W.A. Setser, April 20, 1863 (first quotation), and March 24, 1863 (second quotation), in Greg Mast, ed., “The Setser Letters,” Company Front (June/July 1989): 12, 11; Earl J. Hess, Lee’s Tar Heels: The Pettigrew-Kirkland-MacRae Brigade (UNC Press, 2002), 34-118.
[7] J.T.C. Hood, “The 26th Regiment at Gettysburg,” Lenoir Topic, April 8, 1896.
[8] Thomas W. Setser to W.A. Setser, July 29, 1863, in Mast, ed., “The Setser Letters,” 14-15.
[9] William A. Tuttle to W.A. Setser, July 18, 1863, in Mast, ed., “The Setser Letters,” 14.
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