Alfred Roman, The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865

[453]

So much of Bee's and Bartow's brigades, now united, as had arrived, some twenty-eight hundred muskets, had also been sent forward to the support of the position of the stone bridge.

The enemy, beginning his detour from the turnpike at a point nearly half-way between Stone Bridge and Centreville, had pursued a tortuous, narrow trace of a rarely used road, through a dense wood, the greater part of his way, until near the Sudley road. A division, under Colonel Hunter, of the Federal Regular army, of two strong brigades, was in the advance, followed immediately by another division under Colonel Heintzelman, of three brigades and seven companies of Regular cavalry, and twenty-four pieces of artillery, eighteen of which were rifled guns. This column, as it crossed Bull Run, numbered over sixteen thousand men of all arms, by their own accounts.

Burnside's brigade, which here, as at Fairfax Court-House, led the advance, at about 9.45 A. M. debouched from a wood in sight of Evans's position, some five hundred yards distant from Wheat's battalion.

He immediately threw forward his skirmishers in force, and they became engaged with Wheat's command, and the 6-pounder gun under Lieutenant Leftwitch.

The Federalists at once advanced, as they report officially, the 2d regiment Rhode Island Volunteers, with its vaunted battery of six 13-pounder rifled guns. Sloan's companies were then brought into action, having been pushed forward through the woods. The enemy, soon galled, staggered by the fire, and pressed by the determined valor with which Wheat handled his battalion, until he was desperately wounded, hastened up three other regiments of the brigade and two Dahlgren howitzers, making in all quite three thousand five hundred bayonets and eight pieces of artillery, opposed to less than eight hundred men and two 6-pounder guns.

Despite this odds, this intrepid command of but eleven weak companies maintained its front to the enemy for quite an hour, and until General Bee came to their aid with his command. The heroic Bee, with a soldier's eye and recognition of the situation, had previously disposed his command with skill, Imboden's battery having been admirably placed between the two brigades, under shelter behind the undulations of a hill about one hundred and fifty yards north of the now famous Henry house, and very near where he subsequently fell, mortally wounded, to the great misfortune of his country, but after deeds of deliberate and ever-memorable courage.

Meanwhile, the enemy pushed forward a battalion of eight companies of Regular infantry, and one of their best batteries of six pieces (four rifled), supported by four companies of marines, to increase the desperate odds against which Evans and his men had maintained their stand with an almost matchless tenacity.

General Bee, now finding Evans sorely pressed under the crushing weight of the masses of the enemy, at the call of Colonel Evans, threw forward his whole force to his aid, across a small stream, Young's Branch, and valley, and engaged the Federalists with impetuosity, Imboden's battery, at the time, playing from his well-chosen position with brilliant effect, with spherical case, the enemy having first opened on him from a rifled battery, probably Griffin's, with elongated