Lieutenant Colonel Gustavus A. Bull of the 35th Georgia

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. 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 cannister. 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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