Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/156

 150 Southern Historical Society Papers.

entrenchments. Charges of cowardice were preferred against him, and we heard to-day that he was cashiered for his very natural mis- take. The sentence seems a very unjust one.

July 4th. The enemy fired a national salute. A gun was fired for each of the Confederate States as well as the United States. Some prisoners, whom the Yankees released, brought us information that five hundred and fifty of the enemy's sick and wounded have been sent from this island to Fort Pulaski.

July gth. Lieutenant-Colonel Simonton returned and took com- mand of the battalion now on the picket line established through the camp lately occupied by the enemy at Grimball's, which place was made the headquarters. Five companies were soon relieved, and the other four left under my command. Pushed our outposts as far down as Battery Island. After night-fall established a line across the island from the Stono River to the causeway below Rivers House. Some quartermasters' stores, but of no great value, had been left in the enemy's camp, which the men of the battalion got. A great many letters were picked up, some paper found with printed heads, intended to be used when they got to Charleston, and would date their letters from that city. From some of these letters we learned that the Federal loss on the i6th of June, in killed, wounded and missing, was estimated by them at eight hundred men. The camp at Grimball's was entrenched with flanking arrangements. Regular approaches had been commenced, but only one of their lines had been finished. One battery in the second line was finished. There is plenty of evidence near this one, in the marks of shot and shell, of the effectiveness of the fire of the Secessionville battery. Sergeant Haney, of a Federal regiment, is buried near by. This we learn from his marked grave.

Captain James M. Carson, of Company A, picked up a memoran- dum made by a Federal officer, showing the troops which had been on the island and opposed to our forces. These troops were : Rock- well's battery, Hamilton's battery, Rhode Island and New York bat- teries ; Forty-sixth, Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth, and Seventy-ninth New York volunteers ; Forty-fifth, Fiftieth, Fifty-fifth, Sixty-seventh, Ninety- seventh, and One Hundredth Pennsylvania volunteers; Eighth and Ninth Maine volunteers ; Fourth New Hampshire volunteers ; First and Twenty-eighth Massachusetts volunteers ; Eighth Rhode Island, Seventh vjonnecticut and Eighth Michigan volunteers ; total, eighteen regiments and four batteries. General H. W. Benham had been in command and General Horatio G. Wright second in rank.