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.

[79] successful for a time, but masses of the enemy thrown upon the corps, checked it. Mansfield's corps came to its aid, and the two corps drove back the enemy. But the veteran Mansfield fell, and Fighting Joe Hooker was wounded and carried from the field, where his services had been indispensable.

Within an hour afterward, Sumner's corps arrived, and on its general devolved the command of the right. Sedgwick's division and that of Crawford penetrated the woods in front of Hooker's and Mansfield's corps; French and Richardson were placed to the left of Sedgwick, thus attacking the enemy toward his left centre. The battle now raged around a cornfield surrounded by woods, to which Hooker had in the beginning driven the enemy. Crawford's and Sedgwick's lines yielded to a destructive fire of the Confederates in the wood, suffering extremely, and, their leaders both being wounded, fell back in some confusion; yet they rallied in the wood.

It was now one o'clock, P. M.; at this moment of extreme need Gen. Franklin arrived with Smith's and Slocum's divisions of the Sixth Corps, and their artillery. We had come through the gap, over to Keedysville, across the Antietam at that place, arrived between twelve and one at Brownsville, and then pushed forward to the aid of the right wing. The destructive fire of the artillery now prevented the enemy from pursuing his temporary advantage at the moment that Crawford's and Sedgwick's lines rallied. These were immediately replaced by the two fresh divisions of the Sixth Corps, whose infantry, advancing steadily, followed by its artillery, which came into position in the cornfield beyond the belt of woods on its north side, and swept over the ground just lost, now permanently regained. Smith's Vermont, Maine, and other regiments, went forward on the run, cheering vociferously, fell upon the troops in the wood in their front, and in less than a quarter of an hour cleared and held it. Slocum's Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin regiments, were sent forward along the slopes lying under the first ranges of the hills occupied by the Confederates, and poured a storm of shot into the opposing lines, driving them back from their foremost position. Franklin now sent his batteries forward in the cornfield; they blazed away upon the woods in front and right. We seemed about to carry those woods; if there were any batteries there at