Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 9.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[175] man in a thousand--no man can estimate time with exactness whilst under close musket fire. Lieutenant Craige, of same regiment, he seeks to discredit by using severer terms. “The immense and imposing numbers of the enemy had, by comparison with the small number of the garrison, so dwarfed his visual organs, &c., &c.” The style of criticism adopted by the General was a matter of taste to be determined alone by his own sense of propriety.

We learn from these letters, written by officers of the Twelfth and Sixteenth Mississippi, and the Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh North Carolina, that there were both Missippians and North Carolinians in battery Gregg, and from those of the latter that there were also some Georgians in it. These officers differ as to the numbers of their respective brigades. At the time it could never have occurred to them that the number of the other would ever be called in question, and they required to give it.

A few more quotations will be made, and from General Harris himself. Among those he cites as having expressed opinions about the Battery Gregg fight, was Captain W. Gordon McCabe, who, in an address delivered before the “Association of the army of Northern Virginia,” and published in the December, 1876, number of the Southern Historical Society Papers, in a note, page 301, says, according to General Harris, “that the defense of Battery Gregg April 2d, 1865, had been wrongfully attributed to Harris's Mississippi brigade, and that the defense was made by Lane's brigade.” Upon an examination of the number of those papers referred to, I find the note at the bottom of the page does not contain such words, but the following: “The error of attributing this brilliant defense to Harris's brigade alone, doubtless arose from Lieutenant-Colonel Duncan, of that brigade, being the ranking officer in the fort.” He did not say the defence was made by Lane's brigade, or that it had been wrongfully attributed to Harris's brigade. But he gave a reason why it had been attributed to Harris's brigade alone, and all must see that it was a good one. Had the ranking officer of that small garrison been of Thomas's brigade, it would have been very naturally believed that the men defending it were Georgians, and had an officer of Lane's brigade ranked it would have been equally inferred that the little garrison was of that brigade.

General Harris, page 480, says: “It is somewhat remarkable that during the long period of fifteen years, when public prints, both foreign and American, as well as many eye-witnesses of the day, have accorded the defence of Battery Gregg to the Mississippians and the gallant Louisiania artillerists, that others who at this late date now come forward and ”