The Daily Dispatch

General Grimes. Further Particulars of Mrs. Amanda Cotton, A MURDER MOST FOUL—SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE DECEASED—CAREER IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY—CIVIL LIFE—PERSONAL. (Raleigh Observer.)

Our readers will regret to learn of the assassination of General Bryan Grimes at Bear Creek, within two miles of his home, in Pitt county, on Saturday night the 14th instant. General Grimes had been to Washington, Beaufort county, and was returning home in his buggy, with a little boy driving him, and when he approached Bear Creek, being then a couple of miles distant from his residence, he was fired at from the bushes and killed. So base an assassination and foul a murder has seldom before happened in North Carolina, whether we have regard to the high position of the victim or the dastardly cowardice of the assassin.

General Bryan Grimes was the son of Bryan Grimes, Esq., who was long a resident of Raleigh, and was about fifty-one years of age. He was born at Washington, educated partly in Raleigh, and graduated at Chapel Hill in 1848 with the late Major Seaton Gales and Major R. S. Tucker, of this city. He subsequently turned his attention to farming, and before the war became one of the successful farmers in his section, and ranked deservedly high among the agriculturists of the State.

He entered the Confederate service at the breaking out of the war as major, and passed through that terrible ordeal with distinguished honor, not only winning laurels for himself, but rendering still more illustrious the name and fame of North Carolina soldiery in that grand struggle for independence. It was his division—he having risen to the grade of major-general—that made the last charge at Appomattox. Although North Carolina has produced many sons notable for their intrepid bravery, yet none bore within them a braver or truer heart than him whose loss we are now called upon to mourn.

The fact that without political prestige or military training he attained as high a position in the army as that occupied by any other officer from this State, Lieutenant-General Holmes alone excepted, is evidence that his daring valor, military skill, and conscientious attention to duty compelled recognition from his superiors in command. Present in almost every battle fought by Lee's army in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, he always led his command, and his exposure of his person, almost to recklessness, made it a wonder to his men on a score or more of battle-fields that he escaped with his life.

Civil station and the honors and emoluments of civil office he did not seek. He, however, served in the Convention of 1861, and, having advocated separation in that body, he early abandoned his place and sought to accomplish on the field of battle what he had declared for in the legislative halls.

Prominent among the characteristics of General Grimes was a supreme devotion to truth, and an utter abhorrence of any deviation in that regard. Firm in his opinions, honest in their expression, and brave to a fault, he could never view with complacency any wandering from the path of rectitude or any dishonest gloss given to sentiments on the score of expediency.

Among his friends he was courteous, kind, and considerate, and those who knew him best loved him the most.

After the war General Grimes returned to his farm, in Pitt county, and devoted himself without intermission to its cultivation to the day of his death. We are informed that his industry and skill was rewarded with success, and we trust he left an ample support for his family.

He was twice married. His first wife, Miss Bettie Davis, of Warren, died early, leaving only one child, now Mrs. Samuel F. Mordecai, of this city. His second wife, who was Miss Charlotte Bryan, a daughter of the late John H. Bryan, of Raleigh, survives him. By her he had several children.

What an awful shock, what an inestimable loss, such a death of such a husband and father must be to his wife and children.

THE DETAILS. [Special to the Raleigh Observer.]

WASHINGTON, N. C., August 16.-General Grimes left here about 6 o'clock Saturday evening for his home, which is nine miles distant. He had been in town all day witnessing the convention proceedings. He was driving two horses to a top-buggy, and had with him when shot little Bryan Satterthwaite, a lad of twelve years, son of T. H. Satterthwaite, Esq.

Little Bryan says that the General was sitting on the left side of the buggy, and just as they were emerging from Bear Creek, which is about five miles from here, he heard a gun fire, and General Grimes immediately dropped the reins, saying: "Bryan, I am shot." The boy said: "Are you much hurt, General?" General Grimes replied: "Yes, it will kill me," and began to sink down until he had sunk entirely down into the foot of the buggy.

Little Bryan drove the horses on until he had reached the top of the hill, nearly on which lives a man named Carrow. He called Carrow to him and asked him to help him get the General's legs in the buggy. The boy then drove on to the residence of Colonel J. B. Stickney, which is about two miles from Carrow's, and from there the body was carried to General Grimes's home.

Upon examination it was found that only one buckshot had entered General Grimes's left arm, and had passed through the arm into the breast, severing the large artery and lodging in one of his lungs. No outside bleeding was perceptible; it was all internal, and death ensued in about two minutes after the shooting.

The place where the shooting occurred is swampy, the water being about a foot deep. The road is narrow, with a dense undergrowth on each side. No fitter place for such hellish work could possibly have been selected.

It was discovered the next morning (Sunday) that the assassin had cut himself a trail through the undergrowth to two large cypress-trees about twenty steps from the place where he expected his victim to pass. Here he waited, and as the General's vehicle reached the point desired he fired. About ten or a dozen shot struck the ribs of the buggy-top.

After the shooting the murderer, after wading 200 yards down the swamp, through the water, so as to conceal his tracks, went out upon the high land and made his escape. At the point where he came out of the water a small track, which was seemingly made by a No. 6 gaiter or boot, was discovered.

No clue to the murderer has yet been found, although suspicion rests upon several parties. The murder was committed between sunset and dark. The whole country is alive with men, determined to ferret out and bring to justice the perpetrator of this cold-blooded and most damnable deed.