previous next

[471] was composed almost entirely of volunteers from Texas, accustomed to live with rifle in hand; a regiment of cavalry, which, owing to the nature of the ground, was naturally obliged to fight on foot, distinguished itself among the rest by the precision of its fire, and the fierceness with which it held in check the serried battalions of the enemy. The Confederates, however, were soon compelled to retire behind the parapets of the fort. Unfortunately for them, they had not cut down all the trees in the woods by which they were surrounded, and which enabled the assailants to approach within less than two hundred metres of the counterscarp. Sherman on the right, Morgan on the left, manoeuvring with great unanimity, took possession of these woods, not, however, without sustaining considerable losses. Hovey was wounded; and when the Federals emerged into the open space intervening between these woods and the fort, the terrific fire to which they were subjected stopped them at the edge of the wood. On the left Morgan encountered the ravine, which presented an insurmountable obstacle. He sent a few regiments to support the attack on the right. Here again the main effort devolved upon Steele's division, inured by many a battle. The Confederates, being well sheltered, opened a destructive fire upon all who exposed themselves to view. Meanwhile, the Federal artillery was at work, and dismounted one by one all the guns in the fort. Its defenders could only reply by musketry to the shells which poured upon them from every direction. General Churchill set an example of courage to all, but he had evidently lost the game. The moment for storming the fort had arrived. Firing had ceased on the Federal side; the whole of Sherman's corps on the right and two of Morgan's brigades on the extreme left deployed in front of the fort; the assailants were saluted with a few volleys of musketry, but in an instant they were on the edge of the dry ditch surrounding the work. Great excitement prevailed among the defenders, who finally hoisted the white flag. The fort was invaded on every side by the Federals, who had no other task left but to count their trophies and take care of the wounded. Their losses amounted to one hundred and twenty-nine killed, eight hundred and thirty wounded, seventeen missing, making in all nine hundred and seventy-seven men hors de combat; those

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
John Morgan (2)
Steele (1)
T. W. Sherman (1)
Hovey (1)
Churchill (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: