Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/195

 The Batik of Gettysburg. 183

[From the Times-Dispatch, April 10, 1904.]

THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG,

And the Charge of Pickett's Division.

ACCOUNTS OF COLONEL RAWLEY MARTIN AND CAPTAIN JOHN HOLMES SMITH.

With Prefatory Note by U. S. Senator John W. Daniel.

[Very much has been published regarding the momentous battle of Gettysburg, but the following additions can but be welcome to our readers. Reference may be made to ante p. 33 and preceding volumes of the Southern Historical Society Papers, particularly the early volumes, II-X inclusive. EDITOR.]

WASHINGTON, D. C, March 30, 1904.

Editor of the Times- Dispatch:

SIR, Enclosed are accounts of the charge at Gettysburg by two officers of Pickett's Division of high reputation for courage and reliability the one being Lieutenant-Colonel Rawley W. Martin, then of the 53d Virginia Infantry, Armistead's Brigade, and the other Captain John Holmes Smith, of the Lynchburg Home Guard, who, after Lieutenant-Colonel Kirk wood Otey, and Major Risque Hutter, were wounded in that battle, commanded the nth Virginia Infantry.

In 1897 Commander Sylvester Chamberlain, of an Association of United States Naval Veterans, of Buffalo, New York, wrote to Col- onel Martin (now Dr. Martin, of Lynchburg, Va.), asking him to recount the charge, saying:

"The charge of Pickett's Division outrivals the stoned heroism of the Old Guard of Napoleon. They knew no such battle as that of Gettysburg, and, I believe, the old First Confederate Army Corps could have whipped the best two corps in Napoleon's army, taken in the zenith of his fame."

Dr. Martin wrote this paper under the call from a Northern camp commander.