Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/707

216, under Colonel, now General, Brantly, and Sharp's brigade, participated in the first attack, and "acted with great gallantry," a compliment not unreservedly given to their comrade brigades. Sharp's brigade lost 214 men and Brantly's 126.

Gen. Patton Anderson now took command of the division including Sharp's and Brantly's brigades, and they intrenched on the line they held after the battle of the 28th, with Featherston's division, in which were the Mississippi brigades of Adams and Barry. The enemy brought their skirmish line up within sixty yards, and mounted a cannon with which for several days the Mississippians were much annoyed, occasionally being buried in their rifle-pits by the dirt thrown up by the shells, until the sharpshooters compelled the removal of the gun. There were many instances of courage and daring. On one occasion, Anderson wrote, Brantly's men, by rolling logs ahead of them and by digging zigzag trenches, approached so near the enemy as to be able to throw hand-grenades over his breastworks; and on another occasion Sharp's pickets held their position against a line of battle after those on their right and left had given way.

Finally the flanking movement of Sherman brought Lee's corps south to Jonesboro. In the battle there on the 31st of August, Gen. M. P. Lowrey commanded Cleburne's division, Hardee's corps, and Col. John Wier led his brigade. Lowrey's men swept everything from their front on the first day, and Sharp and Brantly made a resolute assault upon the enemy posted on a hill, exhibiting great gallantry and suffering heavy loss.

In Hood's operations against Sherman's communications in north Georgia, Stewart's corps, the old army of Mississippi, took the most conspicuous part, and it was French's division which made the sanguinary and famous attack upon the Federal garrison at Allatoona, October 6th. The Confederates kept up an assault upon the