Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/227

 j 1-0,11 ,s'A//oA.

219

them, when the general retreat of the Confederate forces was ordered. One sergeant killed, one lieutenant and six men wounded, with twenty horses killed and disabled, gave evidence of the closeness and desperation of this encounter. It was the only approach to a disaster the Fifth Company had on Shiloh's bloody field.

The troops it then fought were of Nelson's fresh division, and no doubt in the engagements of that day it exchanged shots with Men- denhall's battery, Fourth United States Artillery, with Terrill's bat- tery, Fifth United States Artillery, and possibly with Bartlett's Battery G, First Ohio Light Artillery, all attached to that division.

The same tenacity and desperation marked the Fifth Company's career until the end ; no danger could move it, and no disaster could dismay it.

In one of its last engagements in the field, during Hood's Tennes- see campaign, it displayed these qualities most strikingly. At Overall's creek, near Murfreesboro, near a block house at the railroad crossing and Nashville pike, it found itself contending unsupported against the foe a brigade of infantry, with artillery in its front, a regiment of cavalry charging its left flank. The infantry was driven back, their artillery silenced, and the cavalry given such a reception with canister that the saddles of its first squadron were emptied, and the riderless horses, in line of battle, kept on with the charge, passing like a whirlwind through the intervals of the battery, to be captured in the rear. The horses of the second squadron received the canister that had passed over the first, and more, and after the passage of the first squadron were disclosed in utter confusion. The regiment was then driven off with schrapnel.

Firing, retiring by sections, the battery now withdrew, keeping the infantry in front at bay until it met the supports that should have stood by it. One killed and four wounded were its casualties in this encounter, out of which it came with some thirty captured horses. The troops it fought were of Rousseau's Division, the cavalry an Indiana regiment.

But once during the war did the Fifth Company have with an ad- versary any interchange of wishes to meet each other on the field of battle. It was at Mumfordsville, where Bragg captured the place with 4,000 of the enemy. As the prisoners, disarmed and paroled, passed the Fifth Company on their way to Buel under flag of truce, the column halted near the battery, and a splendid-looking young