...hus officially authorized and used at the battle of Gettysburg. It happened in 1864, the day after the negro troops made their desperate and drunken charge on the Confederate lines to the left of Chaffin 's farm and were so signally repulsed, that the writer, who was located in the trenches a mile still further to the left, picked up, in the field outside the trenches assailed by the negroes, some of ...