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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the war of 1861-1865, vol. 1: prelminary narrative, Preliminary narrative. (search)
Senator E. D. Baker's Defence at Ball's Bluff. troops were sent across a rapid stream and exposed to a greater force, without intrenchments and with the stream behind them, was a Massachusetts man and a regular army officer. So was Gen. Frederick W. Lander, who fell in the battle, and was the first of her general officers to die in the service,—as he had also been the first of all men, it was claimed, to offer his services to the general government. See his funeral sermon, by Rev. George W. Briggs, D. D. The 15th Mass. Infantry (Colonel Devens) and the 20th (Col. W. R. Lee) were (with the 71st Pennsylvania) the regiments chiefly engaged, the two companies of the 19th not being in action. Placed in a hopeless position, and hopelessly outnumbered, they did as well, doubtless, as any raw troops could have done; and when they retreated at last, every man for himself, across a river which, as the writer heard Colonel Devens say afterwards, literally boiled with bullets, they had