Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/287

 knees till they had nearly reached the desired object, they suddenly rose, charged and overcame the guard, captured the flag and were rapidly making off with it, when its owners fired upon them. All were struck down but the Sergeant, and as he was making for the house above referred to a young staff officer of my command, having carried some message to Heth's people, was returning by a short cut between the lines, and seeing a man with a strange flag, without noticing his uniform he thought he, too, would get a little glory along with some bunting. Dismounting among the dead and wounded he picked up and fired several muskets at Price; but was fortunate enough to miss him. Sergeant Price survived the war. His home was in Carrollton, Mississippi. Recently the information came from one of his sons, a name sake of the writer, that his gallant father was no more."

The line of killed and wounded spoken of above were those of my brigade, and the house mentioned by which this line lay, was the McPherson house—the only one in the vicinity.

This narrative of Capt. Bond's is easily reconciled with the sworn testimony of my men. There is no more discrepancy than is reasonable to expect from the circumstances; for it can readily be understood how awkward it would have been for Capt. Bond to give all the details.

Price and his comrades must have noticed our colors on top of that slope, for the last hour or more. But they wisely postponed their adventure until they knew by the firing that the Confederate line south of the pike had reached the crest of the ridge. According to the rules of strategy the regiment they supposed to be with our colors should then have changed front and attacked its enemy in flank. No such movement taking place, and those colors still flaunting, as it were, in their faces, they determined to solve the mystery, and with commendable caution to escape detection they moved up the wheat covered slope "on hands and knees" as Bond relates it. Directly west of the colors the field had not been marched over and the wheat was still standing erect.

When these men reached the edge and peered out they saw at a glance that our troops were gone. Only a short distance