Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/665

178 enemy gave way and went down the ridge in great confusion." In this movement the sharpshooters and the two Mississippi regiments were the head of Lowrey's column, and went into the fight with a terrific "rebel yell." The attack upon them was renewed, but the Confederates held their ground. "When my ammunition was nearly exhausted," Lowrey reported, "my men and officers gave me assurance with great enthusiasm that they would hold the position at the point of the bayonet and with clubbed muskets if the enemy dared to charge them."

The record for 1863 may be closed with a review of the service of Mississippians in the army of Northern Virginia, At the battle of Chancellorsville there were two brigades of Mississippians, both in Longstreet's corps: One in McLaws' division, under Brig.-Gen. William Barksdale, made up of the Thirteenth regiment, Col. J. W. Carter; Seventeenth, Col. W. D. Holder; Eighteenth, Col. Thomas M. Griffin; Twenty-first, Col. B. G. Humphreys. This is the brigade whose gallant work at Knoxville has already been mentioned. The other in R. H. Anderson's division, and commanded by Brig.-Gen. Carnot Posey, was composed of the Twelfth regiment, Lieut.-Col M. B Harris, Maj. S. B. Thomas; Sixteenth, Col. Samuel E. Baker; Nineteenth, Col. N. H. Harris; and the Forty-eighth, Col. J. M. Jayne. When the force at Fredericksburg was depleted by Jackson's flank movement, Barksdale's brigade was given a front of three miles to hold on Sunday morning, including Marye's hill, where was posted the Eighteenth regiment and three companies of the Twenty-first, at the historic stone wall. After a terrific cannonade and the repulse of two attacks, Barksdale's whole line was assailed by 20,000 Federals, and after a bloody and determined resistance the enemy, fully twenty to one, got a foothold on Marye's hill, overwhelming Griffin. "A more heroic struggle," said Barksdale, "was never made by a mere handful of men against overwhelming odds. According to the