previous next
[427] the victory, and would have had it, but for the enemy's immense superiority in cavalry, which alone gave it to him.

Three pieces of King's artillery, from which the horses were shot, and which, therefore, could not be brought off, were lost, but the enemy claimed five, and if he captured that number, two were lost by the cavalry and not reported to me. My loss in killed, wounded and prisoners was severe for the size of my force, but it was only a fraction of that claimed by the enemy. Owing to its obedience to orders in returning to the works, the heaviest loss of prisoners was in Wharton's division. Colonel G. W. Patton, commanding a brigade, was mortally wounded and fell into the hands of the enemy; Major General Fitz. Lee was also severely wounded. In the death of Major General Rodes, I had to regret the loss, not only of a most accomplished, skilful and gallant officer, upon whom I placed great reliance, but also of a personal friend, whose counsels had been of great service to me in the trying circumstances with which I had found myself surrounded. He fell at his post, doing a soldier's and patriot's duty to his country, and his memory will long be cherished by his comrades. General Godwin and Colonel Patton were both most gallant and efficient officers, and their loss was deeply felt, as was that of all the brave officers and men who fell in this battle. The enemy's loss in killed and wounded was very heavy, and some prisoners fell into our hands.

A skilful and energetic commander of the enemy's forces would have crushed Ramseur before any assistance could have reached him, and thus ensured the destruction of my whole force; and later in the day, when the battle had turned against us, with the immense superiority in cavalry which Sheridan had, and the advantage of the open country, would have destroyed my whole force and captured everything I had. As it was, considering the immense disparity in numbers and equipment, the enemy had very little to boast of. I had lost a few pieces of

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.
G. W. Patton (2)
G. C. Wharton (1)
Sheridan (1)
Robert E. Rodes (1)
Ramseur (1)
Fitzhugh Lee (1)
King (1)
Godwin (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: