A Civil War Biography
Laurence Simmons Baker
Baker was born 10 May 1830 in Gates County, North Carolina. He
obtained an appointment to West Point and graduated standing 42nd in
the class of 1851. He was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant and assigned
to the Mounted Rifles. He spent the next ten years in the regular
army serving on the frontier and rising to the rank of captain.
Although Baker was opposed to secession, he resigned from the
regular army 10 May 1861 after North Carolina left the Union. He was
commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate army to rank
from 16 May 1861 and helped form a regiment of cavalry. The
regiment, of which he became second in command, was mustered into
Confederate service as the 1st North Carolina cavalry regiment in
Richmond on 12 October 1861. When Robert Ransom, the commanding
officer of the 1st NC, was elevated to brigadier general, Baker was
elected colonel on 1 March 1862. He commanded the regiment during
the Peninsula and the Seven Days campaigns after which the regiment
was assigned to Wade Hampton's division. Baker commanded the
regiment at Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, and
Gettysburg where he succeeded to brigade command after Hampton was
wounded. After taking part in several of the rear guard engagements
covering the Confederate retreat from Pennsylvania, Baker was
promoted to brigadier general on 23 July 1863. Just over a week
later, on 31 July, he was severely wounded in the right arm while
resisting a Federal crossing of the Rappahannock River. On 9 June
1864, after taking nearly a year to recover, he was assigned command
of the 2nd Military District in the Department of North Carolina. He
commanded a brigade that was sent to Georgia to aid in the defense
of Savannah then returned to North Carolina. He commanded a reserve
brigade during the Carolina campaign, seeing action at Bentonville.
He was detached from Joseph Johnston's army when that army was
surrendered so Baker merely disbanded his brigade. He was formally
paroled in Raleigh, North Carolina in May 1865.
Following the war Baker took up farming in North Carolina. In 1878
he became a railroad station agent in Suffolk, Virginia. He died in
Suffolk on 10 April 1907.
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