Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/711

220 served effectively at Franklin, and afterward captured many Federal posts and invested Murfreesboro. They held back all the Federal cavalry, defeating the enemy at Richland creek, King's hill and Sugar creek. During much of the time General Chalmers had practically independent command of a large part of the cavalry, and after Buford was wounded had charge of that division as well as his own. Armstrong's Mississippi brigade lost more heavily than any other cavalry command, its total casualties being 147.

Let us turn now to that desperate struggle in Virginia, in which the army of the immortal Robert E. Lee had held the vastly superior numbers of Grant always in its front, from the Rapidan to the James, until they filed off exhausted and intrenched south of Petersburg. Here, also, Mississippians did their full share of the desperate fighting. Humphreys' brigade, after spending the winter and early spring amid great privations in East Tennessee and sharing the military operations in that region, joined Lee's army at Orange Court House, and subsequently fought with its division, commanded by General Kershaw. The brigade still included the Thirteenth Mississippi, Maj. G. L. Donald, Lieut.-Col. A. G. O'Brien; Seventeenth, Capt. J. C. Cochrane in command; Eighteenth, Capt. W. H. Lewis, Col. T. M. Griffin; Twenty-first, Col. D. N. Moody. In the Third army corps were two other Mississippi brigades; one, commanded by Brig.-Gen. Nathaniel H. Harris and later by Col. Joseph M. Jayne, in R. H. Anderson's division, later Mahone's, included the Twelfth regiment, Lieut.-Col. S. B. Thomas; Sixteenth, Col. Samuel E. Baker; Nineteenth, Col. Thomas J. Hardin, Col. R. W. Phipps: Forty-eighth, Lieut.-Col. Thomas B. Manlove. One, under Brig.-Gen. Joseph R. Davis, was assigned to Heth's division, and was composed of the Second regiment, Col. J. M. Stone; Eleventh, Lieut.-Col. Wm. B. Lowry; Twenty-sixth, Col. A. E. Reynolds;