Eugene Grisso
I I
lie» was a great soldier, lawyer
aii«l doctor, but it was because of
his work at llu‘ state hospitals
iu Kaleigli and .11 organ ton that
lie is best remembered.
By R.
С.
LAWRENCE
House of Commons in 18G2 and re¬
elected in 1864. Amid the "tumult and
the shout in^'' the sessions were long
and the problems presented momen¬
tous in consequences. A sharp conflict
then raged between the state and Con¬
federate government as to whether
the civil courts or the military author¬
ities had supreme jurisdiction, and
regarding the action of the Confeder¬
ate Congress iu pacing an act author¬
izing the suspension of the writ of
habeas corpus — that great bulwark
of English liberty since the reign of
Charles
И.
THE work of the genealogist is full
of interest, and those probing into
family history will tind many
things of eiirious interest. Such a
searcher into the ancestry of Eugene
Grissom would have found that his
grandfather was a near kinsman of
General Oliver Wolcott, a Connecti¬
cut signer of the Declare I . . >f Inde
pendence, Chief Justice of its Court
of Common l'leas. Major General of
its military forces and Governor of
his state. Roger Wolcott, father of
the signer above referred to, was like¬
wise Govrnor of Connecticut, consti¬
tuting one of the few cases iu Ameri¬
can history where father and son
have filled the office of Governor.
My subject was a native of Gran¬
ville, from which came John Penn, a
Carolina signer of the immortal Dec¬
laration. and Leonard Henderson,
great Chief Justice, to whom my
doctor was also closely related.
One of seventeen children of the
• lass referred to by Goldsmith ns
"a bold peasantry, their country's
pride,” he was not able to secure a
college education, yet ns the result of
his own exertions the age of sixteen
found him in the schoolroom; not as
pupil, but ns teacher!
Studied Law
In 1852 he was appointed as Depu¬
ty Clerk and entered upon the study
of law, and the ensuing year he was
elected as Clerk of the Superior Court
bv the suffrage of the |*eople. He
abandoned the profession of law for
that of medicine, pursuing his studies
under the infringe of a private practi¬
tioner while serving as elerk. He did
not seek re-election, but entered the
I'niversity of Pennsylvania from
which he took his medical degree iu
l'5(!, and such were the qualities of
leadership evinced by him even at
that early age that he was elected as
president of his graduation class.
lie returned to Carolina to enter
upon a busy practice as a country
doctor, but after Lincoln called upon
our slate for troops to assist in put¬
ting down the "Rebellion'' and after
Governor Ellis indignantly wired him
that “Yon will get no troops from
Yorth Carolina," my subject became
convinced that we had no other alter¬
native than to accept the gage of
battle thus thrust upon us. He imme¬
diately raised a company of troops
which was attached to the 80th North
Carolina, having decline-1 an appoint¬
ment by the Governor ns surgeon in
order that he might serve in the fore¬
front of the line of battle. Not many
men would have declined the oiler of
a practical “bombproof shelter" to
rush “into the jaws of death, into the
mouth of hell."
Early in May 1802 his regiment was
ordered to Richmond, where the ene¬
my was at the very gates of the Con-
fedcrate capital. This was just a few
«lays before Robert E. Leo assumed
command of the Confederate armies,
i command which came to him ns the
result of a serious wound received by
the Confederate commander. General
Joseph E. Johnston at the battle of
Seven Pines. Darning of this des¬
perate situation. President Davis rode
to the scene accompanied by his
military adviser. General Lee. and
-eeiug the disorder and confusion
which reigned supreme in the Confed¬
erate ranks, Davis immediately placed
Lee in command, and in this way Lee
began his illustrious career as Confed¬
erate Commandor-in-Chief, on which
field he won immortality as one of the
greatest military geniuses in the hi»
lory of the world. It is of interest to
note that Captain Grissom was the
first Confederate officer to ho seriously
wounded after Lee assumed command,
just prior to the opening of the
famous “seven «lays” continuous bat¬
tle, iu which the Confederates tinder
the superb leadership of
Ьм<
began the
campaign which drove McClellan
from the peninsula.
While yet suffering from the effects
of this wound and resulting erysipe¬
las, th«> Doctor was elected to the
Resolutions protesting this action
•>f the Congress were introduced into
the State Senate by the famous ju-
rist Edward J. Warren, grandfather
of Comptroller General Lindsay War¬
ren ; and such was the leadership of
Grissom in the House of Commons
that he was the one who introduced
similar resolutions in that body — reso¬
lutions which ho supported in a speech
worthy of a William Gaston or a
George E. Kndger, and which were
adopted. He was an infiuential mem¬
ber of the legislative committee which
was then of primary importance, that
on Military Affairs; and he authored
the statute which appropriated a mil¬
lion dollars from the public treasury
in aid of the families of indigent sol¬
diers- — an ad which, alas, did not
prove effective, for the public credit
had sunk so Imv that Confederacy cur¬
rency ha«l depreciated almost to the
vanishing point.
Surgeon and Major
During his legislative service he
had been commissioned by Governor
Vance a? full surgeon, with the rank
of Major, and he spent the intervals
between legislative sessions in con¬
stant attendance upon the ovorcrowd-
«•«!
and under-staffed field and base hos¬
pitals, where his duties grew more
and more arduous, for the overwhelm¬
ing forces of the enemy daily bled
white the manhood of the South, send¬
ing to the hospitals thousands of bad¬
ly wounded men; men who all too
often did for lack of necessary medi-
cal and surgical dru^s and supplies.
During this dark period he witnessed
scones of honor and suffering which
left an indelible imprint upon his
memory and which caused him ever
thereafter to have such compassionate
regard for the sick and suffering.
Following the •‘havoc of war and
the battle’s confusion,” ho returned to
the practice of the sorely stricken
countryside, but was soon again called
into the public service by election to
the Reconstruction Convention called
(Continued on page Iwenly-three)
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