Continued from May 27, 2021.
While still the North Carolina Railroad's president, he was selected its principal contractor to build a line to Morgantown, North Carolina. Slow construction progress and high costs produced much criticism, especially from Jonathan Worth, president of the competing Fayetteville and Western Plank Road Company and first postwar governor of North Carolina.
In 1859, despite Worth's criticism, the railroad stockholders reelected Fisher president. During this time, Fisher also became friends with Vermont-born Sewall Lawrence Fremont, a former Army artilleryman who had become chief engineer and superintendent of the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad in eastern North Carolina in 1854. The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad served as a major supply route of Confederate forces in Virginia and Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
During the Civil War, Fisher became the commander of the 6th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. He died leading a charge on a Union battery at the First Battle of Bull Run, supporting North Carolina General Thomas Lanier Clingman as well as Fisher's cousin Jubal Early, who became a Confederate general after that.
Whether the fatal bullet came from friendly fire from the 4th Alabama or 2nd or 11th Mississippi or from the New York Zouaves or other Union soldiers from the Sudley Road will never be known.
--Old B-Runner
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