Richard Caswell Gatlin: North Carolina SoldierBy James L. Gaddis, Jr.

Richard Caswell Gatlin (1809-1896) of Kinston, Lenoir County, North Carolina was a United States Military Academy graduate, a decorated United States Army officer, the first Confederate General to command in the State of North Carolina, and North Carolina’s last Confederate-era Adjutant General. During his 29-year infantry career, Gatlin saw action in all the significant American military conflicts of the middle 19th century and commanded various army posts in the expanding American West. At the outbreak of the Civil War he surrendered his Federal commission to serve his home state of North Carolina. Gatlin first headed North Carolina’s southern coastal defenses in Wilmington; then, when the State troops were transferred to the Confederacy, he was appointed Brigadier General in the Confederate Army and served as the first commander of the Confederacy’s North Carolina Department. Following that command Gatlin became Adjutant and Quartermaster General of North Carolina, the hig...