Written by Attorney David Warren Boone and Judge James F. Ammons, Jr. (Grandsons of Gilbert Wayner Boone); Vetted by Kobe M. Brown and Edited by Cheri Todd Molter
Based on Oral Tradition and Research
William Boon’s role in the Civil War has been something of a family mystery. In the 1960s and ‘70s, Bettie Warren Boone, wife of William’s grandson, Gilbert Wayner Boone, told a colorful story of William’s return from the Civil War to White Oak, in Nash County, North Carolina. This story was possibly gleaned from William’s children, who Bettie had visited frequently.
As Bettie told it, William did not return from the war at the same time as the other Confederate veterans. According to Bettie, William was a man of few words, and Emariah Boon, William’s wife, had waited patiently for months after the end of the war for him to return home. She was finally rewarded one evening when William arrived at suppertime. As soon as he was in the house, Emariah exclaimed, “William, where have you been?” William laconically replied, “Pass the biscuits.”
Warren Boone (Bettie’s son and William’s great-grandson) and David Boone and Jim Ammons (Bettie’s grandsons) remember that Bettie also had shared that Emariah and several others had seen William walking down the road toward home in the gathering twilight. Someone asked who the figure might be, and Emariah said, “I don’t know, but he walks like William Boon.” As he approached closer to home, his wife was said to have cried out: “It is William!”
After William’s death, there was speculation, whenever the subject arose, that William had been a deserter, a traitor, a spy, or a double agent of some sort. Apparently, he never told his family the truth. With the benefit of available public records and historical texts, we now know some of what happened to William during the Civil War, and the truth is quite interesting.
Born in Nash County, William Boon was a twenty-seven-year-old farmer when he enlisted in the Confederate army on March 3, 1862. William served in Company A, also referred to as the “Chicora Guards,” of the 47th North Carolina Infantry. The 47th included young men from Nash, Franklin, and Wake Counties, and they spent time training at Camp Mangum in Raleigh.
Little of Camp Mangum remains, but the camp was located at the western edge of what is now Meredith College, the eastern edge of the State Fairgrounds, and ran north to the current location of the North Carolina Art Museum. The Camp included the area where the North Carolina State University Faculty Club and School of Veterinary Science are now located.
The Regiment spent much of the remainder of 1862 and early 1863 in service in North Carolina. The Regiment saw action in New Bern and Kinston. Shortly before July of 1863, it was assigned to Pettigrew’s Brigade of Heth’s Division in General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
The year 1863 was a pivotal point for the Confederacy. Always short of manpower and war materials, the Confederacy needed support from England. The war was two years old, and there was serious opposition in the North to the continuation of the war. General Robert E. Lee had crushed General Joe Hooker’s Union Army at Chancellorsville in May of 1863. General George Meade replaced Hooker as commanding general of the Army of the Potomac, and Lee marched his army into Northern territory. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis hoped that a successful raid into Northern territory might solidify Northern opposition to the war’s continuation and gain England’s support on the side of the Confederacy.
To that end, the Confederate army went through the Shenandoah Valley into Pennsylvania with few supplies and no supply lines. The soldiers lived on what they could carry and foraged from the countryside, taking food from farmers along the way. Neither army was exactly sure where the other was located. On June 30, 1863, nearly 120,000 men from both armies were scattered in brigades and regiments across an area of more than 100 square miles around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
William’s brigade, part of Heth’s division of approximately 15,000 men, was headed toward Gettysburg where a shoe factory was located. The Confederate army always lacked proper footwear since few shoe factories were in the South, and the shoes issued to Southern troops were of inferior quality. For an army that traveled sixteen miles a day on foot, the lack of shoes was not a small problem.
Just outside Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, Heth’s division, with several North Carolina regiments, including the Forty-Seventh in the vanguard, ran into General John Buford’s cavalry along the Chambersburg Pike. The cavalry dismounted and formed a battle line but could not hold its ground against the more numerous Confederates. General John F. Reynolds soon arrived and quickly began assembling Northern units to form a defense on the McPherson farm along the Chambersburg Pike, near Willoughby Run.
In the early afternoon of July 1, Heth’s division, led by the Twenty-Sixth North Carolina and flanked to its right by the Forty-Seventh North Carolina and other units, routed the Union troops, pushing them into a headlong retreat back into Gettysburg. During the afternoon’s battle, General Reynolds was killed. He was the highest-ranking Union officer killed during the battle. The Iron Brigade suffered horrendous casualties. One Union regiment of the Iron Brigade lost eighty percent of its men and was finished as a fighting force.
General Lee reached Gettysburg late in the afternoon. Unfamiliar with the terrain and without cavalry reconnaissance, the Confederates formed their lines along Seminary Ridge, opposite the more commanding Cemetery Ridge, which was occupied by the Union troops. During the July 1 retreat, one of the Union Army’s commanding officers chose the Cemetery Ridge position based on his personal knowledge of the terrain. The less favorable Confederate position in hostile territory was a primary factor in the events that followed. The Confederate army, with no supply lines, could not occupy any position for very long. The Rebels had to take the offensive to attempt to defeat the Union Army and move forward to forage the food and water necessary to sustain the troops.
During the day of July 2, William’s unit stayed in position, and the soldiers cleaned their rifles. Much of the fighting that day took place to the right of the Forty-Seventh’s position, in the Wheat Field, Peach Orchard, and Little Round Top. Lee attempted furious assaults against the left flank of the Union Army to no avail. The dead and dying from both sides littered the field, but little territory was gained by either side.
On the evening of July 2, Lee and his advisers mulled over their options. The right flank of the Union Army was anchored on Culp’s Hill, a rocky wooded position that was impregnable. The left wing was on Little and Big Round Tops.
After the fighting of July 2, the Union had fortified its position on Little Round Top. The divisions of Lee’s army on the Confederate right flank were a spent force due to heavy casualties on July 2. Another assault on that front would be difficult to overcome. Despite some of his advisers counseling against it, Lee decided on a frontal assault in the center of the Union position on Cemetery Ridge—a commanding, elevated ridge that was positioned approximately 1100 yards in front of the center of Lee’s army.
Pickett’s Virginians and Pettigrew’s North Carolinians led the charge that took place on July 3, 1863. The area of Cemetery Ridge that the Confederates had their focus on featured a clump of trees. Near that clump of trees, a stone wall formed a sharp ninety-degree angle now forever known as the “Bloody Angle.” A breakthrough there would pierce the Union Army in two.
Estimates of the number of Confederates who assaulted Cemetery Ridge range from 11,000 to 15,000. The 47th was on the first line, just left of the center point of the line. Their destination was to the left of the Bloody Angle. At approximately 1:00 P.M., the Confederates unleashed a two-hour cannonade from 170 guns amassed along Seminary Ridge. Reportedly, the sound of the cannon could be heard 150 miles away. Unfortunately for the Confederates, many of the shells landed just behind the lines of Union troops who were waiting for the Confederate attack.
At around 3:00 P.M., the Confederates began the 1100-yard march across an open plain to Cemetery Ridge. The effective range of Union musketry was approximately 600 yards, and Union regiments were ordered to start firing when the Confederates were within 500 yards. At 300 yards, Union cannons unleashed a hailstorm of grapeshot and canister. Some Confederate soldiers reported later that great gaps were opened in their lines as comrades went down like rows of wheat. The Confederate advance came to within a few steps of the stone wall where hand-to-hand fighting took place, but the soldiers in grey had no chance to overcome the center of the Union Army, and about five to six thousand of them made their way back to Seminary Ridge.
There was heavy rain on July 4, and the Confederate army began its retreat toward Williamsport, Pennsylvania. When the retreating soldiers reached the Potomac River at Falling Waters, Maryland, it was discovered that its pontoon bridge had been destroyed. A defensive line was placed along the riverbank while a new pontoon bridge was constructed. The 47th NC Regiment was part of the rear guard.
On the morning of July 14, 1863, Union cavalry detachments rushed the bridge and took more than 200 prisoners. Among them must have been William Boon, whose military records indicate that he was captured at Falling Waters and transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp at Point Lookout, Maryland.
In early 1864, one thousand Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout took the Oath of Allegiance to the United States. They donned the Union uniform to become soldiers of the United States Army. The resulting unit was known as the 1st U.S. Volunteers. William Boon became a member of this unit, serving in Company C. Many Southerners referred to the men who switched sides as “Galvanized Yankees.”
It was originally planned that 1st U.S. Volunteers would serve in the Eastern theater. However, General Ulysses S. Grant opposed the unit’s service in the East, believing that, if captured, the former Confederates would be treated harshly. So, the 1st U.S. Volunteers boarded the troop carrier Continental in Norfolk and were taken to New York. From New York, they traveled to Chicago by train. Six companies, including Company C, went to St. Louis to board the steamboat Effie Deans and headed for Fort Rice in the Dakota Territory to support colonization efforts in the Western territories. The Missouri River was too low to offer passage all the way to Fort Rice, so the men marched the remaining 270 miles. During the entire journey from New York, the men survived on salt pork, hardtack, coffee, and whatever water they could find.
Fort Rice had not been completed yet and its buildings were made of cottonwood, an inferior material. The six U.S. Volunteer Regiments, including William Boon’s unit, had to work to improve their living conditions and suffered many hardships. They were, however, credited with rebuilding transcontinental telegraph lines and stagecoach and mail routes from Missouri to California.
The 1st U.S. Volunteers were mustered out on November 27, 1865, more than seven months after the end of the Civil War. There is no record of how William Boon got home from the Dakota Territory. Only the oft-told story of his return survives: It was passed down by his grandson’s wife, Bettie Boone, and their descendants, and to this day, if a Boone does not want to talk about something, they will say, “Pass the biscuits.”
Submitter’s Sources and Comments:
- North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, Vol. 11, Infantry (45th-48th Regiments). Raleigh: North Carolina Office of Archives and History.
The entry for William Boon (page 250) states:
Boon, William, Private
Born in Nash County where he resided as a farmer prior to enlisting in Nash County at age 27, March 3, 1862. Captured at Falling Waters, Maryland, July 14, 1863. Sent to Baltimore, Maryland. Transferred to Point Lookout, Maryland, where he arrived on August 17, 1863. Released at Point Lookout on February 24, 1864, after taking the Oath of Allegiance and joining the U.S. Army. Assigned to Company C, 1st Regiment U.S. Volunteer Infantry.
- Clark, Walter, ed. Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861-1865. Vol. 3. Raleigh: State of North Carolina, 1901.
(Detailed historical accounts of the 47th North Carolina Regiment during the Civil War by former members of the Regiment including Gettysburg.)
- Butts, Michele Tucker. Galvanized Yankees on the Upper Missouri: The Face of Loyalty. University Press of Colorado, 2003.
(I did not use this text in my account of William Boon. I purchased the book a few years later. It does not mention William Boon by name but contains a detailed history of the First U.S. Volunteers units. It contains tables and statistics about the members of the unit including numbers of volunteers from each county. [15 from Nash County].)
- Brantley, Michael K. Galvanized: The Odyssey of a Reluctant Carolina Confederate. Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2020.
(This book was not used as source material for the story I wrote. Brantley is a Barton University assistant professor of communications who lives in Nash County. He is the great-great-grandson of Wright Batchelor who lived on the on the road from White Oak to Momeyer and was one of the 15 members of the First U.S. Volunteers. William Boon is mentioned on pages 92 and 95. The first entry says that Boon, along with others, was first sent to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, DC, before being transferred to Point Lookout.)
