By Charles T. Joyce
Fields thick with golden wheat and oats blanketed the southeastern Pennsylvania countryside surrounding the hamlet of Fayetteville during the early summer of 1863. On June 28, however, an encampment of Confederate invaders disrupted the bucolic scene.
Soldiers of the 26th North Carolina Infantry gathered together on this Sabbath morning to hear their chaplain preach. He quoted from the Book of Jeremiah’s chapter 8, verse 20: “The harvest is finished, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
The words would prove all too true in the days to come. One young North Carolina officer who would experience the trials and tribulations of battle firsthand was John R. Emerson. A 24-year-old farmer from Chatham County, N.C., Emerson hailed from a line of rebellious and militant men. His great-grandfather, James Emerson, had fought in the War of the Regulation, an agrarian protest against British colonial dictates that had occurred in the Carolina colonies prior to the American Revolution. In 1771, he had been captured at the Battle of Alamance and nearly hanged, drawn and quartered for treason against the Crown.
