Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/161

Rh the next day, being satisfied that the enemy's strength had been so largely increased as to render a further advance on his part imprudent, he sent his wounded to the rear, and proceeded to bury the dead and collect the arms from the battlefield.

I advanced several hundred yards in this manner, obliquing towards the right, in order to get near the left of Branch's brigade, when I overtook its left regiment, which had become separated from the main body. In passing to the front of this regiment my line became somewhat broken, and halted a few minutes for it to reform.

I earnestly objected to making the following reports, as I was not in command of the brigade until after the fall of General Branch at Sharpsburg, but General A. P. Hill peremptorily ordered me to do so from Cedar Run to Shepherdstown, both inclusive—remarking that he hadn't the time to be reading so many regimental reports. I was not aware then that General Branch had already made a report of the Cedar Run fight. This forced me to call for reports from the senior regimental officers present, the time allowed me being very limited, and I had to be guided accordingly.

As I did not see the Seventh regiment in the Cedar Run fight, and as "the first, SECOND and THIRD officers in command at that time" were absent when my report was called for, I was compelled to call for a regimental report from Captain (afterwards Major) J. McLeod Turner, who was in command of the Seventh in the absence of these ranking officers.

The order of battle from right to left was Thirty-seventh, Twenty-eighth, Thirty-third, Eighteenth and Seventh, and in the extract given from Brigadier-General Archer's report, he says that the left regiment (which was the Seventh) had become separated from the main body of Branch's brigade.

My report of the brigade at Cedar Run gave, I am sorry to say, great dissatisfaction to a few of the officers of the Seventh regiment, at the time of its appearance, during the war, in some of the North Carolina papers.

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