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The conduct of the men in this spirited affair was excellent and that of the recruits particularly so, as this was their first engagement.
The casualties were: Lieutenant Colonel Ansel D. Wass, commanding the brigade, wounded slightly at the opening of the engagement.
Captain J. F. Plympton and Lieutenant W. F. Rice, wounded in scalp.
Lieutenant John J. Ferris, wounded slightly in the ear.
Sergeant Dunbar Ross, Co. D, severely wounded in the head,—since died.
Hill's loss was enormously disproportionate to the forces engaged.1
The strength of the regiment in this engagement was but 190 officers and men. Colonel Mallon of the Forty-Second New York, commanding the brigade, had been killed early in the action and the command of the brigade devolved upon Lieut. Col. Wass, of the Nineteenth Massachusetts.
In relating the incidents of the battle, General Walker says: “And soon four hundred and sixty prisoners, with two colors, are brought from under the very noses of the supporting brigades of Davis and Walker, while five of Poague's guns are drawn across the track by the rollicking skirmishers, each piece bestridden by a crowing ‘Yank,’ and so ‘first blood’ and ‘first knock down’ are awarded to the Second Corps.
It was at the time related that these men, brought into the line of the Second Division, recognized their old antagonists of Gettysburg, and on seeing the white trefoil of their captors, exclaimed ‘Those damned white clubs again.’”
1 The loss of the enemy in front of the regiment was greater than the total number of men in the Nineteenth.
Salem Press. Co., Salem, Ma., 1906.
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