s independent for awhile. Upon invitation, he joined Nelson's
Seventh South Carolina Battalion, Hagood's Brigade, and served with
this command (save a brief interval) to the end of the war. He was in
the first battle of Manassas and in Bentonville, the last great battle
of the war. At Battery Wagner his company was on picket duty the night
of the first assault, and it was by his order that the first gun
was fired in that memorable siege, and one of his men was the first
Confederate killed. At the battle of Drewry's Bluff, Va., Captain
Brooks was three times wounded, and lost sixty-eight out of the
seventy-five men carried into action, twenty-five being left dead upon
the field. Upon recovery from his wounds he returned to his command,
but was soon detached by request of General Beauregard and order
of General Lee, to organize a foreign battalion from the Federal
prisoners at Florence, S.C., with distinct promise of promotion.
This battalion was organized and mustered into Confederate service
at Summerville, S.C., as Brooks' Battalion, and in December, 1864,
Captain Brooks took a part of the command to Savannah (then being
invested by General Sherman) and they served a short time on the line
of defense. In consequence of bad behavior and mutiny, however, they
were soon returned to prison. Captain Brooks was now placed in command
of all unattached troops in the city of Charleston, but he became
tired of inactivity, at his own request was relieved, and upon
invitation of his old company, ignoring his promotion, he returned to
its command.

Captain Brooks was born at Edgefield Court House and was educated
at Mt. Zion, Winnsboro, and the South Carolina College. His father,
Colonel Whitfield Brooks, was an ardent nullifier, and named his
son, John Hampden, in honor of that illustrious English patriot.
That Captain Brooks should have displayed soldierly qualities was but
natural, as these were his by inheritance. His grandfather,
Colonel Z.S. Brooks, was a Lieutenant in the patriotic army of the
Revolutionary War, and his grandmother a daughter of Captain Jas.
Butler, killed in the "Cloud's Creek massacre." His brothers, Captain
Preston S. and Whitfield B. Brooks, were members of the Palmetto
Regiment in the Mexican War; the latter mortally wounded at Cherubusco
and promoted to a Lieutenant in the Twelfth Regulars for gallantry in
action.

Captain Brooks is the sole survivor of the first Captains of the
Seventh Regiment, an