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streets of the town.
As the two companies of Michigan troops marched up Fauquier street, in a direct line with the bridge, they were immediately hotly engaged.
The two boats bearing Companies K and C of the Nineteenth Massachusetts, with the National and the state colors (the first ones to be carried across) landed near those containing the two companies of the Seventh Michigan, and the men went forward to their assistance eagerly and swiftly.
Capt. John C. Chadwick, of Company C was the first man of the Nineteenth to land.
The next boat to touch the bank bore the colors of the Seventh Michigan, and, a few seconds later, the remainder of both regiments having crossed, they formed in line on the banks of the river, the left resting on Fauquier street, and advanced, deploying as skirmishers in order to drive the enemy back from the western part of the city.
One can imagine with what interest the crossing of the first two boatloads was watched by the troops on the shore, and with what enthusiastic shouts their landing on the opposite side was greeted.
It was a display of heroism, which moves men as nothing else can. The problem was solved.
This flash of bravery had done what scores of batteries and tons of metal had failed to accomplish.
One man from Company B of the Nineteenth had jumped into the first boat with the Seventh Michigan and, as the rest of his regiment dashed up the bank, he was seen coming from a house with two tall ‘Rebs’ at the point of his bayonet and he proudly marched them to the rear as prisoners.
Many of the other men captured rebels as they ran from the houses and the pontoons as they returned took more than a hundred of these fellows.
The city was held by Gen. Barksdale's Brigade, consisting of the 13th, 17th, 18th and 21st Mississippi regiments, with the 8th Florida and the 3rd Georgia of Anderson's Division.
The men of the Nineteenth were by no means novices in hard fighting on the open field or in the woods and dense underbrush, but attacking an entire brigade with only a thin line of skirmishers for a distance of half a mile, concealed as they were in the attics,
Salem Press. Co., Salem, Ma., 1906.
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