Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/123

Rh which was the left of the army, moved about nightfall to attack Gulp's Hill. After a bitter struggle they took the position with a loss of three hundred in Steuart's brigade, including one hundred in the Second Maryland. In this attack Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert was severely wounded by three balls, it was believed mortally. They held their place all night, and at daylight next morning Steuart's brigade was formed at right angles to the works they had taken the night before, and charged down them at a line held by the enemy two hundred yards in front, with an open field between. As the brigade emerged into the open, it was swept by the fire in front and a ten-fold more destructive one from the left, where a large force of the enemy had been concentrated during the night. Major Goldsborough was shot down and Captain Murray killed, and the Second Maryland annihilated. It had carried five hundred men into battle the night before. Two hundred reported the morning after. Almost all the remainder were killed and wounded, for none were captured except five men tending wounded or dying comrades. After Gettysburg the Second Maryland marched with the army to Orange Court House in Virginia, where in November it was detached from Steuart's brigade and ordered to report to Col. Bradley T. Johnson, commanding the Maryland Line at Hanover Junction.

On June 2, 1864, the Second Maryland was held in reserve to Echols' brigade of Virginians, who occupied a line of works in front of McGehee's house at Cold Harbor, on the same ground over which the battle of Cold Harbor had been fought June 27, 1862. At daylight of June 3d Hancock's corps made a sudden rush at the works, ran over them, and the first thing the Marylanders knew the Union flag was right over them and the Union troops ramming canister in the captured guns in the fortification, to open them on their late owners. Without waiting for orders, officers and men rushed straight at the enemy with the naked bayonet, and in the