Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/535

 The Campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg. 529

Grant withdrew from our left, and General Lee became convinced that he was going to swing round to turn our right, he therefore ordered the artillery on a portion of our left to be withdrawn from the immediate front so as to be ready to move at a moment's notice. On that night General Johnson, hearing the enemy massing on his front, sent a message to his corps commander (General Ewell) asking the return of his artillery. He also sent to General Gordon, commanding Early's division, asking a reinforcement of two brigades (Hays's and Pegram's), which he placed in a second line on the rear of what he considered the weakest of his defences.

The delay of the artillery and consequent disaster to Johnson's division are matters of record. The actual loss in captures was about three thousand men (his division was four thousand strong at the beginning of the campaign) and eighteen pieces of artillery, which the enemy did not get, however, for twenty hours. Johnson's message to his corps commander about the massing of the enemy in his front did not reach General Lee. He usually, in these days at Spotsylvania, left the battlefield at nin"e or ten o'clock in the evening for his tent, a short distance in the rear. Rising at 3 A, M. and breakfasting by candle-light, he returned to the front. On the morn- ing of the I2th, hearing the firing, he rode rapidly forward, but did not know of the disaster to Johnson's division until he reached the front. Before he arrived Brigadier-General Gordon, commanding Early's di- vision, in obedience to orders previously given by General Lee to sup- port any portion of the line about the salient which might be attacked, hearing the firing about daylight, had moved forward towards the sal- ient with his division. Moving in column in the dim light, with General Robert Johnston's North Carolina brigade in front, he came in con- tact with Hancock's line advancing through the woods, it having overrun General Edward Johnson's division, capturing his lines and a large number of his men. The enemy's line thus moving on, stretched across our works on both their flanks, thus taking our men in the trenches on both sides the captured angle completely in flank. They fired on Gordon's advancing column, severel}' wounding Gen- eral Robert Johnston and causing some confusion among the men. It was still not light— the woods dense, and the morning rainy. A line of troops could not be seen a hundred yards off. It was a criti- cal moment. Gordon halted his column, and with that splendid audacity which characterized him, deployed a brigade as skirmishers — extending, as he supposed, across the whole Federal front — and ordered a charge b}'- this line of skirmishers. This charge caused