Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 5.djvu/127

Rh brigade in support delivered its volleys so rapidly as to check the assault, when Anderson, who was on Manigault’s right, moved up his brigade and attacked the supporting brigade, while the Tenth and Nineteenth dashed forward and took the guns. General Bragg allowed these regiments to have the battery, and they sent it to South Carolina to have the names of the gallant men who fell in its capture inscribed upon the pieces. General Withers closed this part of his report with high praise of Manigault’s brigade. The brigade, says the major-general, had been subjected to a most trying ordeal, and had lost heavily. The calm determination and persistent energy and gallantry which rendered Colonel Manigault proof against discouragements, had a marked influence on and was admirably responded to by his command.

Lieutenant-General Polk, in his report, thus refers to the brigade:

The brigade of Colonel Manigault, which was immediately on the right of that of Colonel Coltart [Deas'], followed the movement of the latter according to instructions; but as Coltart failed in the first onset to drive Sheridan’s right, Manigault, after dashing forward and pressing the enemy back on his second line, was brought under a heavy fire of artillery from two batteries on his right, supported by infantry, and was compelled to fall back. . . . But the gallant South Carolinian returned to the charge a second, and a third time, and being aided by the brigade of General Maney, of the second line, which came to his relief with its Napoleon guns and a deadly fire of musketry, the enemy gave way and joined his comrades on his right in precipitate retreat across the Wilkinson pike. This movement dislodged and drove the residue of Sheridan’s division, and completed the forcing of the whole of McCook’s corps out of line of battle, and placed it in full retreat.

With these operations, thus described, the honorable part borne by the South Carolina regiments in the battle was practically ended. Manigault was in line with Hardee and touching the troops on the pivot, and night ended the great contest.