‘* * * In less than five minutes time our men recovered from their panic the men of the 18th falling in indiscriminately with mine, and we shot with great rapidity and execution. About the same time the battery on the left of the ravine, a short distance in rear of Ransom's brigade, did great execution and fired about six hundred shots in a short time. This battery I observed specially; the others, in rear and on the right also, did good execution.’Within ten minutes, or more, Ledlie's division had entered the breach in the parapet of the salient and plunged into the crater—a cavity 135 feet in length, 97 feet in breadth, and 30 in depth,1 with sloping sides, the soil sandy, but filled with great blocks of clay. Wilcox's division immediately followed, and then Potter's, while the Federal artillery—guns and mortars—opened all along their lines, concentrating their heaviest fire on the lines and ground right and left of the crater. General Beauregard, having no reserves, had instructed each of his brigade commanders that, in the event of a breach and attack, they should close rapidly towards that point, leaving a picket line to hold the trenches elsewhere. This instruction was promptly executed upon the order of Division-Commander Bushrod R. Johnson. General Beauregard, aroused from sleep by the explosion, and immediately informed of its precise locality by Colonel Paul, an officer of his staff, despatched the latter to General Lee to make the report, request assistance, and appoint a rendezvous with him at Bushrod Johnson's headquarters, near Cemetery Hill. He then repaired at once to that point, and, after ascertaining that his previous instructions for the event were being properly carried out, went forward to the Gee House, within 500 yards and immediately in rear of Elliott's salient, and, from that commanding point, took a full view of
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aroused from their sleep, they rushed in different directions along the trenches; but soon rallied around their officers, and opened, from their parapets, a rapid and effective fire upon the advancing enemy; while the batteries, so happily provided for this contingency by General Beauregard, also opened with telling effect.
Colonel McMaster, who, after General Elliott fell, commanded his brigade during this action, thus describes the firing of our batteries at the time:
1 General Johnson's statement. See Appendix.
1883. Harper. New York.
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