The 37th North Carolina Infantry Regiment had a tempestuous beginning. Shortly after it was mustered into state service in November 1861, the regiment was issued flintlock muskets and blocks of lead for its members to melt down for their bullets. From private to regimental Colonel Charles C. Lee, the men protested the outdated weaponry. One of the newly elected officers wrote home, ‘We have Recd flint Lock Muskets but Lee says he will not Leed his Men in to battle without Number One arms.

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Sixty percent of the regiment’s troops came from the mountain counties of North Carolina; the other 40 percent came from the counties around Charlotte. Most of the men already realized that the concept of a six-month’s war was an illusion. When the regiment was mustered into Confederate service in January 1862, it was for three years or the duration of war.Colonel Charles Lee was a native North Carolinian who, like his father, Colonel Stephen Lee of the 16th North Carolina, and a cousin, General Stephen Dill Lee, graduated from West Point (class of ‘56). Charles had pre-viously served with future generals Daniel Harvey Hill and James H. Lane in the 1st North Carolina Volunteers, which had earned the nickname the Bethel Regiment for its role in the June 10, 1861, Battle of Big Bethel.

Unfortunately, the .69-caliber arms that replaced the flintlocks were no great improvement. Originally flintlocks, they had been converted to percussion, probably comprising some of the 37,000 stands of antiquated muskets, some dating back to the War of 1812, that had been captured with the Federal arsenal in Fayetteville.

The 37th carried those arms in its first battle, at New Berne, N.C., on March 14, 1862. Colonel Lee had been placed in command of a demi-brigade, and Lt. Col. William M. Barbour, a Wilkesboro lawyer, commanded the regiment at New Berne. The defenders lost the battle, however, due mostly to factors all too common for the Confederacy. Their overall commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence O’Bryan Branch, was given a large area to defend with too few troops, and the Federals he faced were still flush from victory at Roanoke Island.

Soon after the battle, the 2nd North Carolina Brigade was created and General Branch was made its commander. The brigade was composed of the 7th, 18th, 28th, 33rd and 37th North Carolina Infantry regiments. The nephew of Governor John Branch, the brigadier had recently represented North Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives. Throughout his tenure in the Confederate Army, Branch would carry a grudge against the service’s prewar Regular Army officers, often disdainfully referring in private correspondences to fellow generals and commanders as West Point Lieuts. Although Branch was controversial, few observers questioned the mettle of the fighting men in his brigade. By May 1, 1862, the brigade was on its way to central Virginia as part of the plan to increase the size of the Confederate forces in that state. Not long after its arrival, two companies of the 37th traded in their smoothbore muskets for British-made Enfield rifle-muskets. By late May, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac had pushed Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston’s army to the eastern outskirts of Richmond. Branch’s brigade, which had been augmented with a battery of artillery, cavalry and two more infantry regiments, was deployed to guard the Virginia Centtral Railroad about a dozen miles north of Richmond. In response to a report of a large Confederate concentration at Hanover Court House, a couple of miles north of Branch’s position, McClellan sent Brig. Gen. Fitz-John Porter’s V Corps to investigate on the morning of May 27.

The previous night, Companies D and E of the 37th had been sent out to picket the Pamunkey River, to the east. In the morning, the Federals cut off the two companies, along with the 28th North Carolina, from the rest of Branch’s force. While the 28th managed to fight its way out, most of the men in the two 37th companies were captured. Wagons were sent out to pick up the exhausted men who did escape.

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