Duncan K. McRae was the builder of 520 Orange Street in 1851 in Wilmington NC.
Duncan K. McRae was born in
Fayetteville, NC on 16 Aug 1820. His
father John (1793-1880) was a local newspaper editor and longtime postmaster
(1818-1853) in Fayetteville. Duncan was
named after his grandfather Duncan McRae (1769-1837) a Scottish immigrant from
Invernesshire and his mother Margaret S. Kirkland (1797-1820).[1] Another source[2]
has Duncan’s great grandfather Duncan McRae coming from Invernesshire with his
wife Ann Cameron in 1774[3]. They first came to Wilmington, then to Moore
County (west of Cumberland County) and finally settled in Fayetteville,
Cumberland County. Their son Duncan married Rhoda Young and was the father of
John McRae. Duncan (1769) was born in Inverness Scotland[4] so
probably came with his parents to North Carolina. There was mass migration of McRaes from
Kintail (north western highlands) to North Carolina in the 1770’s.[5]
John McRae married in 1814 Margaret
‘Peggy’ Kirkland of Ayr Mount near Hillsborough. He lost his first three
children. His wife died of tuberculosis
in 1820 four months after Duncan McRae’s birth.
Duncan was also infected and had recurrences throughout his life.
We first hear of the oratory of Duncan McRae (1820-1888) when the French General Lafayette made his tour of America in 1825. Lafayette visited Fayetteville, NC (a town named for him) after his visit to Raleigh.
About 5 o’clock Friday afternoon Fayetteville was reached, and at no place in the state were demonstrations greater. Ten miles from the city the party was met by a detachment of artillery. At Clarendon Bridge, near the suburbs, came the civil dignitaries of Fayetteville together with the famous Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry. With these were also the Eagle Artillery and yet another company of artillery. Amid thundering of salvo shots, this column proceeded to the town hall….Here an address of welcome was delivered by the Honorable John D. Toomer, a distinguished lawyer of that place who was afterwards elevated to the supreme court bench. At the conclusion of these formalities, Lafayette was conducted to the residence of Duncan McRae, a prominent bank official of that place, by whom he was entertained during his visit. Here a supper was served followed by many speeches from the assembled company. The most diminutive orator on this occasion, though by no means the least important, was Duncan K. McRae, aged four, who was placed on a table in his grandfather’s drawing-room from whence he delivered an address which was duly acknowledged by the distinguished visitor.[6] Lafayette was then entertained at a public ball at the new Lafayette Hotel by a company of three to four hundred ladies and gentlemen beginning about 9 o’clock.
Lafayette wore a rosette badge to the grand ball and later presented this to his host. It is now at the Museum of Cape Fear along with a brass candlestick, also presented by Lafayette to the McRaes. Their home was located where the old Cumberland County Courthouse stands on Gillespie Street.[7]
Duncan lived for several years with the family of his aunt, Ann Kirkland Ruffin after his mother died. Even after his father remarried in 1826 he spent much of his time in the Ruffin home or at Ayr Mount when he was in school in Hillsborough where he had maiden aunts to dote on him.[8] Other cousins, the Ruffins,[9] the McNeills and the Stranges also lodged at Ayr Mount while attending school in Hillsborough.[10] Duncan attended local schools in Fayetteville before entering the University of North Carolina in 1835 at age 15. Duncan’s grandfather, William Kirkland, died in 1836. In 1838 Duncan, “as hot-tempered as he was brilliant, was the principal in a duel while a college student at Chapel Hill. Distraught by his own behavior and fearful of his father’s reaction to the news of his expulsion from the university, he attempted suicide by shooting himself through the lungs. His life was despaired of, but he recovered. Fortunately, Duncan’s adversary was not fatally wounded in the duel, though Duncan went to jail until the matter could be investigated.”[11] A shot through the lungs would I think at that time have likely proven fatal. It still might have been some of the cause of his often-spoke-of ‘ill health.’ Duncan was not the only hot tempered one in the family. His cousin, William Kirkland Ruffin in the same year in South Carolina, in a drunken fury, shot the landlord at the inn where he had holed up. He landed in jail.[12]
In 1837 (more likely later since
his duel at UNC was in 1838) Duncan McRae transferred to the College of William
and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he was graduated with high
honors. He then studied law with Judge
Robert Strange, his uncle,[13]
and was admitted to the bar in 1841 and started his practice in Oxford.[14]
After just a few months in Oxford,
McRae left to serve the State Department, appointed by President Tyler, as a
courier of dispatches to Mexico City.[15] The instruction to the American Minister in
Mexico was to try and force the sale of New Mexico and California.[16]
His political beliefs did not follow party lines; he had strong Whig sympathies on many issues, having been schooled in the Calhoun brand of states’ rights democracy. Joining the Democratic party, he sought his first elective office in 1842, when he was chosen to represent his native county in the state House of Commons.[17]
After his single term in the legislature (1842/43), representing Cumberland County he felt he preferred practicing law and he left the legislature and opened an office in Raleigh. He practiced law there for seven years becoming an expert in criminal law[18] and according to the NC Bar Association, the “greatest criminal lawyer the State has produced.”[19] He also practiced law in Hillsboro, New Bern, Oxford and Memphis but practiced longer in Wilmington.[20]
In the 1840’s Duncan McRae was an investor in a railroad to go from Raleigh via Fayetteville to Camden, SC but the line was never built.[21]
In 1844 Duncan McRae and Purrie H. Busbee edited a Democratic campaign paper that was called the ‘Hornet’ or ‘Rattler’ or some such ominous name. It was very spicy and vigorous and did good work for its party.[22] Another source calls the paper the Democratic Signal,[23] not quite as spicy as suggested above.
While in Raleigh Duncan McRae married Louise
Virginia Henry, the daughter of Judge Louis D. Henry of Raleigh on Oct 8, 1845.[24] They had three daughters, Margaret Kirkland,
Virginia Henry, and Marie.
In 1847 McRae was nominated by
James K. Polk to be attorney of the US District of NC.[25] He served as US attorney for NC from
1843-1850.[26]
In 1851 he moved to Wilmington to
take up a banking venture while also continuing his practice of law, but he
declined an appointment as director of the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad.[27] And it was in 1851 he built the house at 520
Orange Street, completing it at the end of the year.[28] This was a substantial brick home being
referred to as a mansion in one account.[29] Actually it was a side hall cottage with two
rooms up and two down. Kitchen and other
service buildings were behind the house.
Duncan’s daughters were young, the oldest being age five.
McRae made a reputation as an orator. In 1852 or 53 he defended Mrs. Ann K. Simpson (who happened to be his childhood sweetheart). Mrs. Simpson was the wife of Alexander Simpson, a wealthy carriage shop owner who died from poisoning on 8 Nov 1849 in Fayetteville. She was indicted for the murder of her husband but was acquitted. She had to be extradited from Havana Cuba where she had fled. (McRae said he never doubted the guilt of the murderess although he cleared her. He borrowed the medical books of his brother and read up thoroughly on poisoning and showed more apparent knowledge of medical science than the doctors on the case.)[30] His defense was said by the old residents of Fayetteville to be the most magnificent and eloquent defense ever made in the Cumberland Courthouse. He closed saying to the jury, “You cannot give her peace. You cannot restore her joy but gentlemen you can let her live.”[31] The trial was published in pamphlet form and was probably the first criminal trial to be thus published in NC and among the few up to that time published in the US. [32]
At the 27th annual NC Bar Association session (1925), McRae was said to be the most eloquent orator and lecturer that North Carolina has ever produced.[33] The Wilmington “Morning Star” commented on many of his orations noting specifically an 1845 oration on Andrew Jackson at the Raleigh First Presbyterian Church and his speech at the 1846 Democratic Convention in Raleigh.[34]
In 1853 he ran for Congress from the Wilmington District against William S. Ashe, a favorite of the Pierce administration. As a result, largely through the efforts of a colleague of Ashe, North Carolina-born Secretary of the Navy, James C. Dobbin, McRae was offered by the President, the post of Consul General to Paris in return for his withdrawal from the race. McRae later claimed that he was drugged into capitulation.[35] He claimed when he came to normalcy he was on the Atlantic Ocean, with his commission in his pocket, bound for Paris.[36] Duncan McRae, Esq. United States Counsul, 13 Rue du Faubourg, Montmartre, Paris.[37]
He therefore never spent much time in the new home on Orange Street selling it to Judge John Bynum who is listed as in residence in 1856.[38] As a consul McRae served as secretary to the Council of American Foreign Ministers, and was appointed to be bearer of the Ostend Manifesto (aimed at acquiring Cuba from Spain by diplomatic action) from London to Washington, DC. In 1857 he resigned because of poor health and returned to practice law, this time in New Bern.[39]
The 1858 state Democratic convention was badly split over whether the proceeds from the sale of public land should be used for internal improvements. Those in favor of the proposal bolted the party and, with the support of the remnants of the American or Know-Nothing Whigs, nominated McRae for governor as an independent Democratic candidate. Aside from the public land issue, McRae ran on a platform calling for the stimulation of diverse economic development in North Carolina and removal of what he felt was undue emphasis on the slavery issue. The party regulars nominated the ultimate victor, John W. Ellis[40] who won by a majority of some 16,000 votes in a total vote of 96,177.[41]
In 1859 the Honorable Duncan K. McRae, a university student in 1837, lately consul to Paris, gave the address before the two literary societies at UNC.[42]
In 1860 McRae is in Wilmington speaking at Thalian Hall. Rufus Bunnell[43] wrote in his diary: “Friday, 13th. Having decided to ‘help the widows,’ I went in the evening to hear the Hon. D.K.McRae lecture in Thalian Hall for the benefit of the Widows and Orphans Society of Wilmington. McRae was minister to France under the Pierce administration, and politics being really his trade, he could not resist the temptation to after awhile run his lecture way into the American political field as solely viewed from the southern democratic stand point on the slavery question. He advised all his hearers to stick to the Democratic party; ‘and so save the Union!’ He thought it all in the line of ‘good home politics’ that the southern medical students were leaving the northern colleges, and as he stated in a recent lecture at the Chapel Hill University, (N. C.); ‘we will warmly welcome them back, and they shall here be provided with ‘subjects’ of the right kind---‘for I do not believe that the body of an Abolitionist is created in the natural way!’ Applause from his audience followed this.” The night before he had lectured on the history of Wilmington.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Governor Ellis appointed McRae a colonel, assigned to duty on July 15, 1861 with the Fifth North Carolina Regiment, which was formed at Halifax that month. Within days, July 19th, the regiment was at Manasas Junction, Virginia, in General James Longstreet’s brigade. It saw its initial action at the first Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) on July 21 although not engaged in the most serious fighting. There was much confusion on both sides. General Longstreet’s brigade crossed and re-crossed Bull Run five times that day. But the Confederates won the day.[44]
In the winter of 1861-62 he was at Union Mills on the Orange and Alexandria RR, outpost and picket duty in front of the Confederate line. At one time he held a position on Mason Hill in sight of the Capitol in Washington. After fighting several small skirmishes while in winter quarters in northern Virginia, the Fifth Regiment, as part of General Jubal Early’s brigade, was one of the first to arrive on the peninsula to join Gen Magruder, to stop General George G. McClellan’s advance on Richmond. They were immediately put in position in the defense works near Yorktown and remained in the trenches until the evacuation of Yorktown on 3 May 1862. They were the last of the Confederate troops to leave.
Confederate General Joe Johnston
was retreating up the peninsula from Yorktown to Williamsburg, McClellan in
pursuit. Johnston’s men were plodding along the single miry road behind their
slow-grinding wagon train. Johnston had
not planned a halt until he crossed the Chickahominy but the Union infantry was
closing fast. He instructed Longstreet’s division to delay the pursuit by
holding Fort Magruder. When Union
General Sumner’s men came slogging up they were met by a spatter of musketry
that stopped them for the night. The
fight next day—dignified by time into the Battle of Williamsburg, was confusion
from start to finish. Generals on both
sides lost their sense of direction in the rain. In the end the Confederates
managed to hang on until nightfall, when they fell back and the Federals took
possession of Fort Magruder. Both
claimed a victory.[45]
4 May 1862, McRae was bivouacked in
a field beyond Williamsburg. Owing to determined pressure of the Federals on
the rearguard, Early’s Brigade counter marched into Williamsburg and rested on
the campus of William and Mary where severe fighting resulted in great
slaughter during the day, May 5th.
In the afternoon the Federal troops had taken possession of an abandoned
redoubt. Early’s and Rodes’ Brigades
under Maj. Gen. DH Hill were sent to retake the redoubt. There were four regiments including the 24th Virginia under Col Terry led
by Early in person on the left covered by woods. The 5th NC was on the right
opposite an open field about 800 yards from the redoubt. McRae led a gallant charge against a strong
Union position commanded by General Winfield S. Hancock, who won his soubriquet
and title of “Hancock the Superb” for his conduct in opposing the Confederate
troops in one of the hardest fought battles of the war.[46] Hancock later stated that the Fifth North
Carolina “should have ‘immortality’ inscribed on their banner.” Two-thirds of the men were lost in the futile
charge (McRae lost 290 out of his 440 men—70 percent)[47]. Another source noted 415 men went into
action. 75 answered roll call in the
morning.[48] Gen. Early said of the McRae led charge, “an
attack upon the vastly superior forces of the enemy, which for its gallantry is
unsurpassed in the annals of warfare.”[49] McRae wrote a 10-12 page defense of his role
in the Battle of Williamsburg.[50] Years later in a letter to Gen. Longstreet,
DH Hill wrote, “I cannot think of it till this day without horror. The slaughter of the 5th NC Regiment
was one of the most awful things I ever saw.”[51]
In reading about the battles of the War, it becomes obvious that the reports especially from the commanders painted a picture often at odds with the actual happenings. Most tended to project the best light possible on their actions. They are not the first to realize that history will remember them and they hope in the best light and they want to make sure their side of the story is told.
Following the wounding of Early (in
the shoulder while advancing the 24th Virginia Infantry in the
futile charge against Hancock’s protected position in the Federal held
redoubts),[52] McRae
was given command of the brigade, but he became seriously ill from a minor
injury received at Williamsburg and could not assume the post, which then
passed to Colonel Samuel Garland.[53] Another source noted command fell on McRae
“whose feeble physical frame soon succumbed to severe illness.”[54]
Gen. Jubal Early wrote of McRae, “advancing in gallant style towards the
enemy.” And “had one of the brigades which had come up to the position from
which mine advanced been ordered up to the support of Col. McRae the
probability is that a very different result would have taken place.”[55]
Following Williamsburg, at the
Battle at Seven Pines Col. McRae endeavored to take command “but from sheer
weakness was unable to do so.” The
Division of Hill remained near Richmond to protect the Capital.[56]
After the defense of the
Confederate Capital, Lee turned his attention to ending the stalemate by
attacking the Army of the Potomac on the Rappahannock outside Washington. This led to his victory at the Second
Manassas. As Union General Pope’s
frazzled army faded eastward up the pike toward Washington, Lee’s was no less
frazzled. What next? McClellan answered
the question with necessity—defend Washington.
Lee’s solution, arrived at by a narrowing of choices, was invasion.[57] And he proceeded to plan his advance across
the Potomac into Maryland.
McRae was able to return as the commander of the 5th North Carolina for the Battle of Boonsboro (or South Mountain) on September 13, 1862. (Army of Northern Virginia, DH Hills Division, Garland’s Brigade) Gen. “Hill had been fighting his Thermopylae since early morning.” Events had shown that the gap (in South Mountain) was by no means as defensible as it had seemed. “Coming up just as Hill was about to be overwhelmed—one brigade had broken badly when its commander Brigadier General Samuel Garland was killed, and others were reduced to fighting Indian-style, scattered among the rocks and trees—Longstreet counterattacked on the left and right and managed to stabilize the situation until darkness ended the battle.”[58] On the death of Garland early in the battle, McRae assumed command of the brigade, holding the far right of the Confederate line against heavy frontal assaults until heavy casualties forced him to withdraw.[59] McRae was also wounded at South Mountain.[60]
Four days later, September 17, 1862, at the Battle of Sharpsburg (as it is termed in the South) or Antietam, with McRae still in command, the brigade fought in the infamous Corn Field, suffering the loss of the majority of the brigade, including McRae, who was badly wounded[61] but remained in command. Union Gen. Hooker bore down. “Noting the glint of bayonets and the boil of smoke from the forty-acre cornfield, he called a halt while six of his batteries came up and began to flail the standing grain with shell and canister, their three dozen fieldpieces joined presently by heavier long-range guns pouring in a crossfire from the ridge beyond the creek. Haversacks and splintered muskets began to leap up through the dust and smoke, along with the broad-leafed stalks of corn and the dismembered heads and limbs of men.”[62] “Every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the [Confederate] slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before.”[63] This one day struggle along the Potomac River some 60 miles northwest of Washington is considered by many historians as the pivotal battle of the War. Though it was a technical standoff, it was considered a Union victory because it compelled General Robert E. Lee to retreat from his first invasion of the North and dissuaded England and France from recognizing the Confederacy. With 6,300 killed and 17,000 wounded the battle had the highest casualty total for any single day before or since for the US.[64] One in five soldiers had become a casualty of the September 17th fighting.[65]
McRae was passed over for promotion
when his junior, Colonel Alfred Iverson, was promoted to brigadier and given
permanent command of the brigade.[66] One week later, McRae resigned effective Nov
13, 1862.[67] McRae wrote a letter to Governor Zebulon
Vance, noting that he was a soldier for 19 months, except for 25 sick
days. Much of the time he was commander
of the brigade. He had the trials of
retreat from Manassas, exposed service in the trenches of Yorktown and in that
retreat. He was in battles in Maryland and
South Mountain. To assuage his honor
having been passed over by his subordinates in command he felt compelled to
resign.[68]
Five of the McRae brothers fought in the War. Alexander McRae, a graduate (1851) of West Point was killed in 1862 at the Battle of Valverde in Arizona Territory (now the state of New Mexico). He had served in the US Army in the West and remained loyal to the Union and continued to serve in the West in the mounted riflemen, promoted to Capt. in June and in August was with the 3rd Cavalry. The Battle of Valverde was fought when the Confederates tried to take the western forts along the Rio Grande from Texas to Arizona and New Mexico. Alexander was commended for gallantry and in 1867 was re-interred at West Point.[69] James Cameron McRae served for four years and fought in the Battles of Big Bethel and Williamsburg and as major on the staff of Gen. Lawrence Simmons Baker. Dr. James A. McRae was a surgeon in the NC 5th.[70] He entered in 1861 but resigned in the winter of that year.
On his recovery in 1863, Governor Zebulon B. Vance appointed Duncan McRae as special envoy to southern Europe to find a market for North Carolina cotton and to buy very badly needed supplies. He served with George N. Saunders to market state bonds as well as purchase supplies. Saunders proposed to send the supplies by sailing ship under foreign flags. But Duncan, the state’s inspector in Wilmington, wrote Vance that steamers were the only viable vessel for defeating the blockade.[71] McRae and Saunders did not have cordial relations in their efforts in England. But on the successful completion of this mission, McRae returned to run for a seat in the Confederate Congress, but was defeated. He then founded a newspaper, The Confederate, in Raleigh, which was an organ for the Davis and Vance administrations, the foremost pro-Davis daily.[72] McRae stayed in Raleigh to publish the paper until General William T. Sherman’s troops arrived.[73]
In 1867 McRae was arrested for complicity in a murder of an African American by a mob in Fayetteville.[74]
After the war because he felt that the Reconstruction government would not provide an atmosphere in which he could work comfortably (and perhaps related to the above arrest), he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to practice law in the firm of McRae and Sneed.[75] He there published a law journal.[76]
About this time his doctor advised him he could not live unless he quit business for a time and refrain from taking any alcoholic stimulant. The doctor advised him to go to Florida, take a gun and dog and live in the open for a period. He did as instructed. On one occasion he became drenched with a shower of rain. He felt cold and was constrained to take a stimulant. It made him feel splendid and he continued to take it daily until he felt himself a perfectly well man and then he returned to Memphis.[77]
On account of the health of a daughter he went to Chicago by 1876[78] and practiced law there.[79]
McRae eventually returned to North
Carolina in 1880 and practiced in Wilmington.
This time he lived at 414 Dock Street and practiced law with a kinsman,
Thomas W. Strange, 220 Market Street as McRae and Strange.[80] He soon took rank as one of the foremost of
the Bar. He was employed in the
celebrated case in the US Court of Matthews v. The Carolina Central Railroad,
with such eminent lawyers as Judge Dillon of New York, Edmond Robinson and
Charles Steele, Daniel L. Russell, and others.
In this case he received a fee of $5,000 and desiring to invest it so he
could have something to live on in his declining days, he placed it in cotton
contracts and lost all. He then lobbied
his friends to get Governor Scales to appoint him to the judgeship made vacant
by the death of Judge Allmand McKoy.
Scales refused and this ended his career.[81]
In 1880 Duncan McRae made a speech
in favor of Winfield S. Hancock, his former adversary during the Battle of
Williamsburg. Hancock was the Democratic candidate for President in 1880.
In his later years he became a
bitter critic of the Civil War. On 21 August 1885 he wrote to DH Hill,[82]
who queried him on the battles of the past, “I did not expect ever to write
this much about the war. To tell the truth I recall to it with little pride and
no satisfaction. It was an enterprise began in folly and conducted with
imbecility of Legislation to a disastrous failure. All there is of glory
belongs to the self sacrificing and brave men who endured to the end.”[83]
In 1886 Duncan K. McRae (e. 1835)
was given an honorary degree (LLD) by the University of North Carolina.[84]
McRae was always rather frail and his war wounds were said to have worsened his condition. He spent his last years in rapidly declining health. Seeking special medical attention he went to New York City in the summer of 1887. He died in Brooklyn, New York at the home of his daughter February 12, 1888, age 67, and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York City. His wife died in 1906, also in New York and his daughter Virginia Henry McRae in 1918, both buried at Woodlawn.
On February 14 ‘The Morning Star’ in Wilmington printed McRae’s obituary.
The intelligence of the death of Colonel Duncan K. McRae reached us yesterday. It occurred at his daughter’s residence in Brooklyn, NY on Sunday evening, 12th February..…For a year or more he had been a great sufferer, and last summer went North to seek such skill as New York could afford……North Carolina has produced the fewest number of men who could be compared with him in brilliancy of intellect. In wit he was equal to any man we ever knew. In powers of repartee he was indeed a master. In eloquence when at his best, and in his prime, he was of a high order. In mental resources he would compare with most men of his time. He was an admirable illustration that splendor of mental parts is not incompatible with solidity of reasoning. He was a good lawyer, but a better advocate. When in full health he had but few rivals at the North Carolina bar as an advocate…..He was a man of something like genius…..
On the 15th under “Reminiscences of a Gifted North Carolinian,” the Wilmington Morning Star noted, Those who heard him introduce Senator Vance in Wilmington in 1880, will remember the brilliancy of the performance. It was the wittiest, brightest speech we ever heard fall from human lips of the same length. We felt sorry for Vance that he had to follow such an introduction.
The Bishop of the Episcopal Church paid tribute to Duncan K. McRae noting “whom few men more remarkable for mental power have adorned the history of our diocese and state.”
Another friend characterized him at the North Carolina Bar Association, “he was full of sprightliness and interspersed his conversation always with wit and humor. That he was the most eloquent speaker I ever heard, I do certainly declare. I have seen him sway an audience and have heard them sob and cry aloud; have heard them cheer with uproarious applause; have seen them swayed by him from pathos to wit; from the sublime to the ridiculous, first from one to the other, and no orator of his day measured up to him in this respect.”[85]
Another speaker before the Bar Association in 1920 noted, “The most caustic lawyers I have known were Col. DK McRae and Col. LC Edwards. They were unsparing but relented in old age.”[86]
[1]
Dictionary of NC Biography, Vol. 4, L-O, William Powell, ed. 1991, p. 189
[2]
Fayetteville Fever by Ellison Williams, 31 Mar 2011, City View, Fayetteville
Lifestyle Magazine.
[3]
Electricscotland.com
[4] Cross
Creek Cemetary #1, Block 80.
[5]
Electricscotland.com
[6] Builders
of the Old North State, Selected Sketches by Marshall Delancey Haywood, 1968,
p. 159-160
[7]
Fayetteville Fever
[8] The
Kirklands of Ayr Mount by Jean Anderson, p. 43.
[9] The
Kirklands…..p. 124.
[10] The
Kirklands….p. 61.
[11] The
Kirklands….., p. 140. She quotes from
the Ruffin-Roulhac-Hamilton papers: Alice Ruffin to Catherine Roulhac, Mar 20,
1838. Southern Historical Collection, UNC.
[12] The
Kirklands…p. 140.
[13] Husband
of his aunt, Jane Rebecca Kirkland.
[14] Dict.
o.f NC Bio
[15] ibid.
p. 190
[16]
McRae.org, April 2010, Misty Chavis
[17] ibid,
p. 190
[18] ibid. p
190
[19]
Proceedings of the NC Bar Association, 1920
[20] NC Bar
Association, 27th Annual Session p. 54.
[21] Wake A
Capital Co. of NC by Elizabeth Murray, p. 260.
[22] The
Morning Star, Wilmington, 15 Feb 1888.
[23]
Ourcampaigns.com
[24] Dict.
of NC Bio. p. 190
[25] Journal
of Executive procedures of US Senate, 1845-48, Tue 5 Jan 1847. Nominated…from and after 2 Mar when his
present commission expires.
[26]
Politicalgraveyard.com
[27] Daily
Journal, Sept 8, 1851-Nov 13, 1851. Oct 24, 1851. Duncan K. McRae declined
appt. as Dir. On part of state in Wilmington and Raleigh RR (Alexander McRae is
president of the W&R RR.) [Is this
Alexander his brother?]
[28] New
Hanover Co. Insurance Policies, 1849-1853, Book II, page 305, Block 130, Jan
28, 1852
[29] Land
and Dowers, Book A, p. 152. New Hanover County.
[30] The Morning
Star (of Wilmington), Feb 15, 1888.
[31]
Fayetteville Fever
[32]
Reports, NC Bar Association, Vol 27, 1925, p. 54.
[33] Ibid.
p. 53.
[34] The
Morning Star, Feb 15, 1888
[35] Dict.
of NC Bio. p. 190
[36]
Reports, NC Bar. p. 55, 27th Annual Session
[37] Lower
Cape Fear Historical Society, Inc. Bulletin, October 1987, p. 1.
[38] New
Hanover County tax list, 1856.
[39] Dict of
NC Bio. p. 190
[40] Ibid.
p. 190
[41]
Builders of the Old North State, Selected Sketches by Marshall Delancey
Haywood, 1968, p. 202
[42]
Commencement Speakers of UNC.
[43]
1835-1909 from Bridgeport Conn. kept a diary while in Wilmington working for
James F. Post on the Bellamy Mansion as assistant architect and draftsman,
1859-61. I believe the diary may be in the NC Room at the NH Co. Library. I got
my quote from Beverly Tetterton.
[44] The
Civil War, Vol 1, Shelby Foote, p. 82-83.
[45] The
Civil War, Vol. I, Shelby Foote, p. 411.
[46]
Reports, NC Bar, p. 55
[47] John
Bankhead Magruder, a military reappraisal, p. 183.
[49] Lives
of Distinguished NC People, p. 535
[50]
Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol 7, p. 360
[51] 31 Aug
1885, Longstreet Papers, Perkins Library, Duke Univ.
[52] John
Bankhead Magruder, a military reappraisal, p. 183.
[53] Dict.
NC Bio. p. 190
[54]
Histories of Several Reg. of NC, p. 282.
[55]
Autobiographical sketches of Gen Jubal Early, Battle of Williamsburg, 5th
NC under Col McRae
[56]
Histories of Several Reg of NC.
[57] The
Civil War, Vol I by Shelby Foote, p. 661
[58] The
Civil War, Vol. I, p. 677
[59]
Histories of Several Regiments. p. 190
[60] Who was
Who in the Civil War, Stewart Sifakis, 1988
[61] Dict NC
Bio. p. 190
[62] The
Civil War, Vol. I, p. 688.
[63] Union
General Joseph Hooker, himself wounded in the ferocious fighting remarked on
the following day. Quoted in ‘Preservation’ magazine, Fall 2012. p. 35.
[64]
Wilmington Morning Star, Sat, Sep 14, 2002
[65]
‘Preservation’ magazine, Fall 2012, p. 35.
[66] Who Was
Who in the Civil War, Stewart Sifakis, 1988
[67] Dict NC
Bio, p190
[68] John
McRae papers, UNC
[69] The
papers of Jefferson Davis
[70] NC
Regiments 1861-1865, Vol 1
[71] Gray
Phantoms of the Cape Fear, Running the Civil War Blockade, Dawson Carr.
[72] This
Astounding Close, The road to the Bennett Place, Mark L. Bradley
[73] ibid p.
190
[74]
Manuscript at UNC, John McRae Papers.
[75] ibid p.
190
[76]
ourcampaings.com
[77] NC Bar
Assoc. 27th Annual Session, p. 56.
[78] 12 Sept
1876 Nashville Daily American, p. 63. Col. Duncan K. McRae, formerly of Memphis
“is now’ a resident of Chicago.
[79] The
Morning Star, Wilmington, NC, 14 Feb 1888
[80] Wilmington
City Directory, 1881-82, 1883.
[81]
Twenty-Seventh Annual Session, North Carolina Bar Association, p. 56-57.
[82] Maj.
Gen DH Hill who also fought at the Battle of Williamsburg.
[83]
Wikipedia. Tim Ware, Bloody Prelude: The Battle of South Mountain; a letter from
McRae.
[84]
Honorary Degrees by UNC on the web.
[85] 27th
Annual Session, North Carolina Bar Association, p. 57.
[86] NC Bar
Assoc. Vol 22, 1920, p. 184.
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