Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 07.djvu/132

124 their line, and to have broken the Stonewall brigade, composed of troops equal to Napoleon's Old Guard, was an act of gallantry not to be surpassed by any troops of any army.

As my brigade advanced through the woods to retake the position, the minnie balls were rattling like hail against the trees, and as we debouched into the field through which the railroad cut ran, nothing could be seen between us and the smoke and fire of the enemy's rifles except the tattered battle-flag of the Louisiana brigade; the staff of this was stuck in the ground at the edge of the cut, and the brigade was at the bottom of it throwing stones.

About midway between the woods and the cut I received a wound in the hand; but before we reached the cut, the enemy, who had been terribly punished, commenced to retreat, or, I may say, to fly in great disorder.

We were ordered to halt at the cut; but some of the command, among whom was Major Poinsett Tayloe, of my regiment, with a considerable number of the men, did not hear the order, and continued the pursuit for some distance beyond.

As soon as the battle was over I went to the rear to have my wound dressed, and having found the "field hospital," I slept that night with one of the surgeons under a wagon.

The next day Dr. W. A. Spence (our brigade surgeon) and I rode over the whole battlefield together. So thick were the enemy's dead along those portions of the line where they had fought, that I found myself mentally repeating, as I rode along, those lines which Campbell puts into the mouth of Lochiel— They lay peculiarly thick just in front of the railroad cut; in some instances one on the top of another, and up almost to the very edge of the cut. These were all killed by minnie balls.

Especially for the purpose of ascertaining what destruction had been done by our artillery, the Doctor and I rode over the ground which had been commanded by it. Several hundred yards in front of the railroad cut and hear a small persimmon tree, we found four bodies which were lying together and had evidently been killed by the same shell. On a hill about three-quarters of a mile from our guns we found another body that had been killed by the artillery. These five were all that we could find, and we wondered at the time, and often spoke of it afterwards, how so many men