Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/529

48 led the skirmishers during Sunday and deserves great credit for his courage and coolness. He was wounded in the hip early on Monday morning and taken from the field. Colonel Fant and Major Stennis, of the Fifth, and Lieutenant-Colonel Mayson, commanding the Seventh, were all conspicuous in the thickest of the fight. All the Mississippians, both officers and men, with a few exceptions, behaved well." Among the others mentioned by Chalmers were Serg.-Maj. William A. Rains and Private Fleming Thompson, of the Ninth, two brave Mississippi boys of but seventeen years of age, who accompanied him on horseback, and in the absence of staff officers bore orders under the heaviest of the fire. The brigade went into action with 1,740 men, captured 1,600 prisoners, and lost 82 killed and 343 wounded.

General Bragg in his official report of the battle, wrote: "Brig.-Gen. James Chalmers, at the head of his gallant Mississippians, filled—he could not have exceeded—the measure of my expectations. Never were troops and commander more worthy of each other and of their State."

The Mississippi cavalry were distinguished on this field. Col. A. J. Lindsay, commanding the First cavalry—in which Miller's battalion was incorporated, with that officer as lieutenant-colonel—went into battle with Cheatham. After the withdrawal of the Confederate army, the Mississippi cavalry defended the rear and was the last of the army to leave the field. Brewer's battalion of Mississippi and Alabama cavalry was also actively engaged, and when the army fell back acted as rear-guard to Polk’s corps.

Major Hardcastle and what was left of the Third battalion, after guarding prisoners all night in the rain, marched back to the battlefield Monday morning, meeting soldiers falling back who told him, "You are too late." With not a hundred men remaining, he posted himself behind logs and trees on the edge of the field. "The enemy was seen on the opposite side with his battery.