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Lieutenant Colonel
Gustavus A. Bull was mustered into service as junior
second lieutenant in the
LaGrange Light Guards, Company B, Fourth Georgia
Regiment, April 26, 1861.
He resigned and was promoted lieutenant-colonel of the Thirty-fifth Georgia,
October 15, 1861.
He was born in LaGrange, Ga., 1835, entered Franklin
College and was graduated with the first honor in 1854. After teaching
school for several years, read law, and located in Newnan, Ga. He soon won
a high reputation in his chosen profession, and in 1860 was one of the
Breckinridge electors. Senator B.H. Hill pronounced
him the most promising
young man in the South.
He was a strict
disciplinarian, but always courteous
and kind to his men and thoughtful to their comfort.
On the 31st of May, 1862,
on the battle-field of Seven Pines, this bright star went down in blood.
Early in the engagement General Pettigrew was badly wounded and the command
of the brigade devolved upon Colonel E.L. Thomas. Lieutenant-Colonel Bull
then assumed command of his regiment and led it in a desperate charge upon a
battery which was pouring upon them a murderous fire of grape and canister.
The column halted and began to waver, when, riding in front of it, Colonel
Bull gave the command, "forward," and appealed to the men to follow him. At
that moment he fell mortally wounded .He died the following day and was
buried by the enemy and fills an unknown grave. The whole regiment admired
and loved him.
One of the members expressed the sentiments of all when
he wrote to Colonel Bull's father: "The crushed and broken hearts that
mourn the loss of the hero of the Thirty-fifth Georgia
are not confined to your family circle." General Pettigrew, commanding
the brigade, said: "If there was a better officer in the army than Colonel
Bull, and one to whom the prospect of distinction in any department of life
was brighter, I did not know him.
He was indeed a loss to his country."
The soil of the Old Dominion will forever be sacred because in it rests in
their bloody gray so many of the hero martyrs of the South. As long as the
South is trod by men worthy to be free, all honor will be accorded her sons of
the sixties, and heroism and devotion will be an example and inspiration
for all time to come."
Henry W. Thomas, _History of the Doles-Cook Brigade_ (1903; reprinted
in facsimile by Morningside, 1988), Chapter II, History of the Fourth
Georgia Regiment, Sketches of Regimental Officers, pp. 91-92.
Robert Emory Park wrote, on p. 32 of his "Sketch
of the Twelfth
Alabama Regiment" (Richmond,
1906):
"My gallant cousin, Colonel G.A. Bull, of the
Thirty-Fifth Georgia, was killed bravely cheering on his
men."
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