Background
GRIMES, Bryan was born on November 2, 1828 in the family plantation “Grimesland”, United States. Son of Bryan and Nancy (Grist) Grimes. His father, a supporter of Henry Clay, was a man of great wealth, owning a large estate and many slaves.
Education
Private school, southern university.
Career
The younger Grimes attended Bingham School and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1848. He had one child by his marriage to Elizabeth Hilliard Davis on April 9, 1841, and, after her death, eight children by his marriage to Charlotte Emily Bryan on September 5, 1863. Grimes, like his father, was a Whig and a planter.
He had no desire for public office, becoming instead a cultivated gentleman who traveled in Europe during the years before the war. However, as a member of the North Carolina secession convention he was a vehement secessionist. When the war began, he volunteered for service in the Confederate Army.
He entered the Confederate Army as a major of the 4th North Carolina Regiment and participated in the Virginia battles of Yorktown, Williamsburg, and Seven Pines in the spring of 1862. In December of that year, he commanded a brigade at the battle of Fredericksburg, and at Chancellorsville in May 1863 he helped to rout Siegel’s Corps. Grimes had some success in his attempts to check the peace movement in his state.
He declined an opportunity to enter the Confederate Congress in order to remain in the field. At the Wilderness he saved Richard S. Ewell’s Corps, for which he was promoted,to brigadier general on May 19,1864. He participated in the battle of Winchester in September of that year, and on February 15,1865, he was promoted to major general in command of Ramseur’s Division.
Grimes fought at Fort Stedman and in the trenches before Petersburg, and he displayed great heroism during the retreat of Lee’s army. He fought at Saylor’s Creek on April 6 and commanded one of the last attacks on Appomattox on the very day of the surrender. Grimes, a persistent fighter, opposed the surrender.
Nevertheless, he surrendered at Appomattox and was later paroled. After the war, he returned to his plantation, where he enjoyed much success and lived the life of a country gentleman. Grimes, a haughty aristocrat, refused postwar public service and became involved in a legal battle when he attempted to have a group of immigrants deported from the county.
He was killed by an assassin hired by those immigrants at Grimesland, North Carolina, on August 14, 1880. Ashe, Cyclopedia of Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas.., I; Peele, (comp.) Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians.
Religion
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Politics
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.