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right, under a severe fire, and drive back the growing masses of the enemy on my right.
This bold and hazardous offer was accepted as a forlorn hope.
It was successfully executed; the enemy was driven from my immediate right, and the works were held, notwithstanding the enemy still enfiladed my line from a part of our works in front of Harris' brigade, which he held unto the last.
For this all honor is due Colonel Bennett and the gallant officers and men of his regiment.
To Colonels Parker, Cox, Grimes and Bennett, to the gallant officers and patriotic men of my little brigade, the country owes much for the successful charge, which I verily believe turned the fortune of the day at that point in our favor.’
‘Hancock,’ says General Law, ‘had been reinforced by the divisions of Russell and Wheaton, and about half of Warren's corps as the battle progressed.’
All day long the men contended like fiends for the works over which both Federal and Confederate flags were waving.
Two extracts from official reports will show the fierceness of the fighting.
Brigadier-General Grant, of the Vermont brigade, says: ‘It was not only a desperate struggle, but it was literally a hand-to-hand struggle.
Nothing but the piled up logs and breastworks separated the combatants.
Our men would reach over the logs and fire into the forces of the enemy, would stab over with their bayonets; many were shot or stabbed through the crevices between the logs. ... . It was there that the somewhat celebrated tree was cut down by bullets, there that the bush and logs were cut to pieces and whipped into basket stuff.’
General McGowan, on the Confederate side, says: ‘Our men lay on one side of the breastworks, the enemy on the other, and in many instances men were pulled over.
The trenches in the “bloody angle” had to be cleared of the dead more than once.’
General Grant in his report sums up this attack in the brief sentence, ‘But the resistance was so obstinate that the advantage gained did not prove decisive.’
General
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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