Lieutenant-General T. H. Holmes was entrusted by President Davis with the organization of the reserve forces in North Carolina. General Holmes was the son of Governor Gabriel Holmes. He graduated at West Point in 1829, and was assigned to duty with the Seventh Regiment of Infantry. With this regiment he served with distinction in the Seminole War and also in the Mexican War, in which he was brevetted Major for conspicuous gallantry at Monterey. With his keen sense of honor, pure Christian character, devotion to duty and utter forgetfulness of self, he was fit to be a companion of the knights who sat at King Arthur’s round table. A true son of the Old North State, he had promptly responded to her call, and resigning a Major’s commission in the United States Army, had been appointed by the President first Colonel, then Brigadier, then Major-General and finally Lieutenant-General. As courageous as a lion, he was as gentle as a woman. At the battle of Helena, Arkansas, amid a storm of shot and shell, with a coolness which the writer has never seen surpassed, he rode into Graveyard Hill, upon which was concentrated the fire at short range of fifty cannon and five thousand muskets. It was a daring and fearless ride. Like General Pettigrew, he was one of the few men who declined promotion. Well does the writer remember the receipt by General Holmes, when commanding the Trans-Mississippi Department in Little Rock, of a Lieutenant-General’s commission, all unsought and unexpected. He at once dictated a letter to the President, declining with grateful thanks the high honor and requesting him to bestow it upon a worthier man. It was only upon Mr. Davis’ insistence that the promotion was afterwards accepted. Mr. Davis in his “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,” says of him: “He has passed beyond the reach of censure or of praise, after serving his country on many fields wisely and well. I, who knew him from our school boy days, who served with him in garrison and in the field, and with pride watched him as he gallantly led a storming party up the rocky height at Monterey, and was intimately acquainted with his whole career during our sectional war, bear willing testimony to the purity, self abnegation, generosity, fidelity and gallantry which characterized him as a man and as a soldier.” A truer, braver, purer heart never beat under the Confederate gray. General Holmes on 28 April, 1864, established his headquarters at Raleigh, N. C., and undertook the task of organizing the Reserves of the State. His staff consisted of:-- Lieutenant-Colonel Frank S. Armistead, a graduate of West Point, as Inspector-General. He was later elected Colonel of the First Regiment of Junior Reserves and was afterwards assigned to the command of the Junior Reserves brigade consisting of the first three regiments. He was recommended by General Holmes for the appointment of Brigadier-General in terms of high praise.