Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/739

244 eye of General Walthall, Colonel Brantly ordered a charge which routed the enemy, whose loss was greatly increased by the fire of the artillery upon his confused and retreating columns. Three times the enemy charged upon Brantly's line, but each time was decisively repulsed. One of the severest fights in which he participated during this campaign was at Kolb's Farm, June 22d, where the Federals under Hooker and Schofield attacked Hindman's and Stevenson's divisions. They were repulsed, whereupon the Confederates in turn failed to take the position of the Federals. On July 26th Col. Samuel Benton was made a brigadier-general, and he held command of Walthall's brigade until the battle of July 28th, when he was mortally wounded. Thereupon Brantly took command of the brigade. In this fight Colonel Brantly's regiment drove the enemy from the Lickskillet and Atlanta road and captured his temporary works, but could not maintain its position in them for lack of support. Brantly was now made brigadier-general, and all through the subsequent campaign in north Georgia, north Alabama and Tennessee commanded Walthall's old brigade, now in the division of Gen. Edward Johnson. He also led his brigade in the campaign of the Carolinas, surrendering with Gen. Jos. E. Johnston.

Brigadier-General James Ronald Chalmers was born in Halifax county, Virginia, January 11, 1831. His father was Joseph W. Chalmers, who, having moved to Mississippi when James was a lad, settled at Holly Springs and became United States senator. The son was prepared for the South Carolina college at Columbia, where he was graduated in 1851, and returning to Holly Springs studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1853. He was district attorney in 1858, and in 1861 was a delegate to the convention which passed the ordinance of secession. Being, like his father, an ardent State rights Democrat, he gave his vote in favor of secession. He entered the