John Calvin Gorman

A journalist and printer in Raleigh, he had travelled west - including in Kansas from 1852 - 58. He was a journalist in Beaufort, NC, and was in Wilson, NC at the start of the War. He was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant of Company B of the Second Regiment on 16 May 1861.

He was promoted to Captain on 17 September 1862. He described his view from the Sunken Road at Sharpsburg in a letter to his wife on 23 September:

... Just then, a Yankee horseman waved his hat at us, and Col. Tew returned the compliment. It was the last I saw of the Colonel. Our skirmishers began to fire on the advancing line, and we returned to ours. Slowly they approach up the hill, and slowly our skirmishers retire before theirs, firing as they come. Our skirmishers are ordered to come into the line. Here they are, right before us, scarce 50 yards off, but as if with one feeling, our whole line pour a deadly volley into their ranks - they drop, reel, stagger, and back their first line go beyond the crest of the hill. Our men reload, and await for them to again approach, while the first column of the enemy meet the second, rally and move forward again. They meet with the same reception, and back again they go, to come back when met by their third line. Here they all come. You can see their mounted riders cheering them on, and with a sickly 'huzza!' they all again approach us at a charge, but another volley sends their whole line reeling back ...

He may have resigned his commission on 8 November 1862, but was again wounded, in action at Fredericksburg, VA on 14 December 1862. He was captured at Spotsylvania, VA in May 1864 and in prisons in Washington, DC, at Ft. Delaware, MD, and a prison hospital at Beaufort, SC.

He was Adjutant-General of North Carolina 1871 - 76. He was mayor of Raleigh in 1875. He later moved to Washington, DC.

Service information here from Moore's Roster1. The quote above from his letter at the North Carolina Archives, researched by Scott Hartwig. Other details from family genealogists, his gravesite on Findagrave, and an obituary in The (Raleigh) Evening Visitor of 29 December 1893, page 2.

11/05/1835; Greensboro, AL

12/27/1893; Washington, DC; burial in Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh, NC