divide the honors due us among all our division is a liberality which is only shown in certain cases. Of courses the reports are to written out; but I know the disposition so well that I look for no special mention of our regiment, while it is the only one in the Army of Northern Virginia which did go in and silence the guns on the heights; and what is more, if a support of a brigade had been sent up to us, the slaughter of A. P. Hill's corps would have been saved on the day following. I still have 300 men. Colonel Avery, a gallant officer, fell in front on the heights, mortally wounded. He died thirty hours afterward. This hasty scraw I write to you as an act of justice, and in compliance with a promise to the men, before I pass off, if fall I must. We will have an engagement here or nearer the river in a day, or less. perhaps. This regiment has had a reputation, you know, and I fear no harm which can come to it while any are left; but it is due to the noble dead, as well as the living, that these men be noticed in some way. I assure you it is no sensation or fancy picture. Such a fight as they made in front and in the fortifications has never been equaled. Inside the works the enemy were left lying in great heaps, and most all with bayonet wounds and many with skulls broken with the breeches of our guns. We left not a living man on the hill of our enemy. I write this now for fear I will not live to write at leisure hereafter. With you sense of propriety, I need not say more than that this cannot be exactly an official document, for it has no form, no beginning, no ending, but is a simple story, badly told. All we ask is, don't let old North Carolina be derided while her sons do all the fighting.

Your obedient servant,

SAML. McD. TATE,

Major, Commanding Sixth North Carolina.

Governor[ZEBULON B.]VANCE.

[P. S]-All my company officers are good ones, but there are also many vacancies; how are they to be filled -by election or appointment?

No. 475. Report of Col Kenneth M. Murchison, Fifty-fourth North Carolina Infantry, of action at Williamsport.

NEAR RAPIDAN STATION, August 5, 1863.

SIR: Agreeably to instructions, I have the honor to report briefly the operations of this regiment during the late campaign. Leaving Fredericksburg on Monday, June 4, after a succession of marches we reached the vicinity of Winchester on 13th instant, where the regiment was thrown in line of battle with the brigade. During the two days' engagement around that town, which consisted mostly of skirmishing, the regiment took no active part. The enemy having regiment took no active part. The enemy having evacuated on the night of June 14, and losing many prisoners, the regiment was detailed on the 18th to guard 2, 000