Description by Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Asbury Speer
Description by Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Asbury Speer, Twenty-eighth Regiment North Carolina Troops, of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1863
July 10, 1863
[T]he tale is too awful to be told. . . . Our grand army made its way into Pennsylvania across the Blue Ridge to Gettysburg where we met the enemy on the first of July, and had a battle on the 2nd and 3rd. . . . I went into the fight on the 3rd with 326 men with guns and could only muster next day 100 men. . . . the balance killed, wounded or missing. There was only about 12 men killed dead that we know of but we have 95 men that cannot be accounted for who was either killed or wounded or left inside the Yankee lines, as we made a charge to take their stronghold and could not hold their position, but had to fall back. . . . The charge was almost the last hope. . . . The three days of July will be long remembered by the people of North Carolina as the North Carolina troops did nearly all the fighting that day and have nearly been destroyed-none of the regiments in our brigade are as large as a good company. . . . Those large North Carolina regiments just came to this army-some of them 1,200 strong-and can only muster 2 or 300 men. . . . I took in 38 officers; and came out with only 17. . . . So as you see we have suffered on all sides. . . .
