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of the Thirty-eighth, lost an arm, and Maj. J. D. Matthews was dangerously wounded.
Col. C. A. Evans, commanding the Thirty-first regiment, and leading, in the charge on the left, his own and the Thirty-eighth regiment after their separation from the brigade, received a slight wound, and a number of other officers were killed or wounded.
The losses among rank and file were very heavy, showing the desperate character of their charge.
Early in the action, Capt. Edward Cheves, volunteer aide to General Lawton, lost his horse, but he went into battle on foot and fell pierced through the heart by a rifle ball.
‘Though a mere youth, he had exhibited a degree of zeal, intelligence and gallantry worthy of praise, and not one who fell on that bloody field has brought more sorrow to the hearts of those who knew him best.’
The loss of the brigade in this battle of Gaines' Mill was as follows: Thirteenth, 6 killed, 54 wounded; Sixtieth, 3 killed, 1 wounded; Twenty-sixth, 8 killed, 32 wounded; Sixty-first, 6 killed, 30 wounded; Thirty-eighth, 54 killed, 118 wounded; Thirty-first, 29 killed, 141 wounded; aggregate, 492.
After this battle, Magruder and Huger pushed forward south of the Chickahominy.
On the 27th, Toombs, instructed to feel the enemy, sent seven companies of the Second, under Colonel Butt, against the intrenched Federals, and supported them with the Fifteenth, Colonel McIntosh; Seventeenth, Colonel Benning, and Twentieth, Col. J. B. Cumming.
There was a spirited fight for an hour and a half, in which the enemy was defeated in his effort to dislodge the Georgians, the brunt of the contest falling upon the Second and Fifteenth regiments.
The Second lost in killed and wounded about half the men carried into action, and the Fifteenth lost 71 out of 300 engaged, including the chivalrous Col. W. M. McIntosh, who fell mortally wounded, and Captain Burch and Lieutenant Tilley, killed in action.
The behavior of the entire brigade, as General Toombs expressed it, was
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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