About the Fayetteville (N. C.) Road Fight

Confederate Veteran
Volume, Number 7, Page 331
July 1911

J. W. DuBose, of Wetumpka, Ala., requests of comrades, officers, and privates of Wheeler's Cavalry, and especially of participants, for information of the fight of March 10, 1865, with Kilpatrick on the Fayetteville (N. C.) road, and asks whether Wheeler's Cavalry came on the field at daylight and led in the attack on Kilpatrick's camp and what part Butler's Cavalry took in the fight.

He says: "General Butler claimed that General Wheeler did not get into the attack on the camps because he had to ride (his whole command) around a miry swamp, so boggy that it caused him to be late. General Wheeler's report of this battle in the "War Records," written by him after the surrender, gives the battle in detail and tells of a number of officers under him who were wounded there. He makes no mention of Butler at all. Butler was in the attack on the camp, and claimed it to the last of his life as his fight, and his only. He said he did not see General Wheeler on the ground until the fight was over. The attack on the camp stampeded the enemy and drove them until a swamp, a short distance off, stopped them. General Kilpatrick jumped through the window of the room in which he was sleeping and ran out barefooted. He borrowed a pair of boots from one of his men, got some clothes, and led his troops back. Then the main fighting came off. General Butler contended that Wheeler must have fought then and not in the opening attack on the camp, if he fought at all. The dispute should be settled."

[Without taking time to investigate the "Records" (see Volume XLVII., Part 1.), it is evident that two different engagements are considered EDITOR VETERAN.]