Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/427

 Recollections of Fredericksburg. 421

of the hill. It was the part of wisdom in Burnside to attack at that point. It is true he failed, but he would have failed at any- other point. General Lee had a dozen other "slaughter pens" along his line that would have proved more disastrous than Marye's Hill. Besides, Marye's Hill, on the 3d of May, 1863, was a weaker position to defend than it was on the 13th of December, for the rea- son that the out-houses, plank-fences, orchards, and other obstacles to a charge, that existed at that time, were all removed or destroyed by the army during the winter, and nothing remained on the open plain to break the lines of an assaulting column. I could not doubt that the same acumen that prompted Burnside to attack that point would lead Sedgwick to renew it. I sent at the request of Colonel Griffin, who realized his perilous situation, three companies from the Twenty-first regiment — Company F, under the command of Captain Fitzgerald, Company C, under command of Captain G. W. Wall, and Company L, under the command of Captain Vosberg — to rein- force the Eighteenth. General Barksdale applied to General Pen- dleton, who had control of a large train of artillery on the telegraph road on Lee's Hill, not a mile off, and not in position, to send a bat- tery to Taylor's Hill, to command the two bridges that spanned the canal. Instead of sending a battery from his train, that lay idle during the whole engagement, he ordered a section of the Washing- ton Artillery from the redoubt on the plank road, where it was needed. Barksdale also applied to General Early to reinforce Colonel Griffin, but received none. General Hays was sent to Taylor's Hill with three regiments of his brigade. These three regiments, and the section of Washington Artillery, behaved nobly, and drove back the column that advanced against Taylor's Hill — if, indeed, the movement of this column was not a feint to draw off troops from Marye's Hill. While these movements were going on, the Federals sent a flag of truce to Colonel Griffin for the humane purpose of removing his wounded that had fallen in the assaults made in the morning. With that generous chivalry, characteristic of that battle-scarred veteran — not suspecting a "Yankee trick" — this truce was granted, and the enemy, with one eye on their wounded, and the other on our trenches, discovered that our redoubts were nearly stripped of their guns, and our infantry of the Eighteenth regiment stretched out to less than a single rank, along the hne defended by Cobb's and Kershaw's bri- gades and thirty-two guns on the 13th of December, 1862.

The discovery emboldened him, and as the last wounded Federal was taken from the field, a concentrated fire, from thirty or forty