Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/59

Rh hospital. He died about two in the morning of May 17th, 1863. Conscious to the last, he said to Dr. Vandyke that he was resigned to his fate and prepared to die. He had been religiously educated from early youth." Thus lived and thus died Major Joseph Washington Anderson, a gallant Virginian, perishing far from home, on a stricken field, for his belief, his flag, his honor and his country. In the December of that year his body was taken from the battleground by his father. He lies among his kindred in the graveyard at Fincastle, in the old county of Botetourt.

About four in the afternoon of that disastrous day Buford's Brigade of Loring's Division arrived to the support of General Stevenson, but too late for effective service. The battle was lost. In the late afternoon the Confederates withdrew in good order, crossed Baker's Creek at sunset and bivouacked near Bovina. The next day saw the march back to Vicksburg. Another day and the siege of Vicksburg had begun.

The Confederate line of defense was five miles in length. Barton occupied the river front and the fortifications on the right centre; Gumming the left centre, and Lee, reinforced by Waul's Texas Legion, the extreme left. The position of the Botetourt Artillery was to the right of Hall's Ferry Road, in a saliant angle, on a narrow ridge that sloped to the west. It had two guns–Parrotts, I believe–and the men were armed with Enfield rifles. Captain Johnston, named for marked and distinguished gallantry by Generals Pemberton, Stevenson, Burton and Lee, became chief of artillery, Stevenson's Division, and the Botetourt men served in the trenches under the command of Lieutenant Francis G. Obenchain, a brave and able officer.

In this world-famous siege of Vicksburg; in these forty-seven days and nights of heat, hunger, sleeplessness, disease and death; against continued assault, attack from gunboats and mortars, enfilades from sharpshooters, attempts of sappers, mines, explosions ; under a bitter rain of shell, grape and canister from eighty-six batteries, the men of the Botetourt Artillery fought like heroes and that is to say they fought no better and no worse than their comrades in those trenches. Four redan, lunette, redoubt and riflepit; from behind those ditches, abatis, stockades, entanglements of pickets and telegraph wires, earthen