A. J. Bennett, private , First Massachusetts Light Battery, The story of the First Massachusetts Light Battery , attached to the Sixth Army Corps : glance at events in the armies of the Potomac and Shenandoah, from the summer of 1861 to the autumn of 1864.

[124] the action. The infantry was immediately ordered in at this place. But the reserve artillery having already entered the conflict, the artillery of our corps, for the time being, became the reserve.

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On the Union right, extending along the ridge over Cemetery Hill to Culp's Hill, were the Second Corps (Gen. Hancock arriving on the previous afternoon, ‘giving strength to the position and confidence to the forces by his presence’), the Twelfth Corps (Gen. Slocum having arrived in the evening of the 1st of July, being at that moment the senior general), the Eleventh Corps and Wadsworth's division of the First. Hill's Confederate corps, which was the centre of Lee's army, confronted the Second Corps and part of the Eleventh; while the Confederate left, Ewell's corps, was opposed to a part of the Eleventh and Wadsworth's division. The remainder of the First was on the left of our army, on the 2d of July, as, late in the afternoon, was the Twelfth, it having been despatched to the aid of the weakened Third.

Here Hill's corps made a vain attempt to storm Cemetery Hill, and Ewell gained some slight advantage toward Rock Creek. These movements commenced about six P. M., and continued into the evening, the moon having risen while the struggle continued. Ewell's movement developed to him the fact that our extreme right had been somewhat weakened, the Twelfth Corps, as has already been stated, having gone to the aid of the Union left, and he was able to make a slight lodgement on Culp's Hill. But when the strife ceased, upon the night of the 2d of July, all along the line, it may be said that the advantage lay decidedly with the Federals, for the left occupied an impregnable position, that which the commanding general first designed that it should hold, and on the right Ewell was dislodged on the morrow.

In the profound silence of this midsummer night there was no slumber for Gen. Meade and his lieutenants. The commander is even said to have contemplated a change in his plan of movements. In the council of war, however, the advice of his generals seems generally to have been in favor of maintaining the position held at dusk, as incomparably superior to any other that might be selected. Moreover, despatches from Richmond, which had been found upon a captured courier, showed that Lee could hope for no more reinforcements.