General Willi a
D. Pender
As long as memory of (lie South's outstand¬
ing heroes live, the name of Major General
Pender will always he* recalled as one of
the greatest soldiers of the Confederacy.
PENDER 14 an honored
паше
here
in Carolina, whore the county of
Pender preserves the
паше
and
fame of Major General William Dor¬
sey Pender, slain at Gettysburg.
The name of Pender still lives in
the two grandchildren of the Gen¬
eral — W. C. Pender. Norfolk lawyer;
and L. S. Pender, buyer for the Pen¬
der Stores. It also lives in Lieutenant
B. I>. Pender of the United States
Navy (Retired), a nephew; and an¬
other nephew, David Ponder, founder
of the Ponder chain of stores, top
flight citizen of Norfolk. Take North
Carolinians out of Norfolk, and what
would there be left A mere handfull.
Still another nephew of the Gen¬
eral is Dr. Harold Pender, Dean of
the School of Engineering at the Uni¬
versity of Pennsylvania. He was grad¬
uated from Johns Hopkins Ph.D..
after which he became a member of
the engineering staff of the New York
Central Railroad. Thereafter he
served on the faculty of the Univer¬
sity of Syracuse: later on the faculty
of the Boston School of Technology;
but around fifteeu years ago he be¬
came Dean of the School of Engineer¬
ing at the University of Pennsylvania,
a position he still occupies.
From Edgecombe County
The Penders hail from Edgecombe
County, and it was at the country
seat of his father that General Wil¬
liam D. Pender was born in
Ш4.
He
was a professional soldier, graduat¬
ing from West Point in the class of
1854, where among hie classmate*
were Custis Lee; Stephen Dill Lee;
and J. E. B. Stuart. A word about
these classmates may be in order.
The Confederate war opened when
the Confederate General G. P. T.
Beauregard notified Major Robert II.
Anderson, Federal commander of
Fort Sumter, that the Confederate
batteries would open lire unless the
fort was surrendered within one hour.
This notification to Major Anderson
was signed “Stephen D. Lee, Captain
C.S.A., and Aide dc Camp to General
Beauregard.” Later this Lee became a
Lieutenant General of the Confed-
By R. C. LAWRENCE
eracy, and one <>f Pender's children
was named Stephen Lee Pender.
.1. E. B. Stuart was in command of
the detachment of Federal troops sent
to Harper’s Ferry to put down the
John Brown insurrection; and he
was present when Brown was cap¬
tured. Stuart later rose to he Major
General and commanded all the cav¬
alry in the Army of Northern Vir¬
ginia. The annals of the Civil War
holds nothing more glorious than the
career of Stuart, who twice rode his
squadrons entirely around the Federal
armies, and who never knew defeat.
When Stonewall Jackson was killed,
his command devolved upon Stuart,
and he sent the grey lines forward
with the cry, "Remember Jackson."
At Gettysburg, Lee lacked two
шеи
—
Jackson and Stuart. Jackson had been
killed before the fight at Gettysburg;
and there General Lee attacked with¬
out waiting for his squadrons under
Stuart to arrive. Just a year later
Stuart was to lose his own life in the
battle of Yellow Tavern.
Custis Lee was a son of the Con¬
federate Comniander-in-Chief, and
himself rose to l»e a Major General
iu the service of the South.
Transferred to the Cavalry
Pender's rank on graduation was
sufficiently high for him to Ik- com¬
missioned to the artillery, but he pre¬
ferred the cavalry branch of the serv¬
ice and was transferred to that arm.
lie saw active service in New Mexico,
California. Washington and Oregon,
fighting the Apache Indian'. In 1850
Pender married Mary Francis, a
daughter of Hon. Augustine H. Shep¬
herd. of Salem, then a member of
Congress, and the wedding tour con¬
sisted of a trip “down home.” Here
Pender observed conditions which
caused him to resign his army com¬
mission and to cast his fortunes with
those of his native state.
Upon the outbreak of the War,
Pender was elected as Colonel of the
Third North Carolina, and remained
with this command in the vicinity of
Suffolk until the battle of First Ma¬
nassas. In this battle Colonel Charles
F. Fisher of the Sixth North Carolina
(who had been President of the North
Carolina Railroad) was killed, and
Pender was ordered by bis superiors
to take over the command of the Sixth.
On June 3. 1862. the cause of the
Confederacy was precarious; the Fed¬
eral. were only four miles from Rich¬
mond; the fate of the South trembled
in tin- balance. At Seven Pines desper¬
ate fighting followed; and the situa¬
tion was so serious, tin- results might
he so disastrous that both General
Lee and President Jefferson Davis
hastened to the field. Joseph E. John¬
ston. the Confederate commander, had
been wounded, and Davis ordered Lee
to assume command. The Confederate
President here had occasion to ob¬
serve Pender's methods of handling
his regiment. Be it remembered that
Davis was a West Pointer; that he
served as Colonel during the Mexican
War, during the course of which lie
sustained a wound which kept him
■>n crutches nearly two years; and that
he later served as Secretary of War.
Surely Davis ought to recognize sol¬
dierly conduct when he saw it. When
the lighting lulled Davis rode up to
Pender and said: “General Pender, 1
salute you" : and three days Inter a
commission ns Brigadier reached
Pender, dated from the day at Seven
Pines.
Pender was placed in charge of
Pettigrew’s Brigade, a. that General
was incapacitated by wounds. As
Brigadier. Pender led his in
о
n
through all the fierce fighting of the
Seven Days— at Gaines Mill. I’ray-
ser’s Farm, and
“He stood with Lee at Malvern
Hill
And watched the earth drink
blood.”
At Second Manassas the troops of
Pender fought like tigers, as they did
the following day at Chantilly, where
the gallant Federal General Philip
Kearney was killed and whore Pender
( Continued on page twenty-eight)
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