Isaac O. Best, History of the 121st New York State Infantry

[156] fall backward. Others would stagger about a few paces before they dropped. To us the suspense was horrible. We could not understand the pause before reaching the works and we said to one another, “What are they stopping for? Why don't they go on?” But the agony was soon over. Their colonel had halted to bring his men into line for the final rush, and as soon as they closed up and filled the gaps in the line, they gallantly moved forward, and again met the devastating fire of the sheltered Rebels which they could not overcome. They were forced back after getting up to the works and their right crossing it and capturing some of its defenders, who were North Carolinians.

Our men could not get up to their works in line of battle because the trees had been cut and so piled together that in places men could not get through. In some places gaps or lanes had been left in the slashings, and it was in these places that our men reached the works. After a determined and desperate attempt to take them they lay down in front of them and General Upton took a portion of the command to the right where the works had been carried, and moving down to the left, drove the Rebels out of the works in front of which our men had been repulsed, and were lying in their front. Here, occupying the outside of the Rebel works that had been captured, an incessant fire was kept up, for the enemy seemed determined to retake the works and kept up a scorching fire until after midnight. They inflicted but little loss upon our command, and finally fell back upon a second line of works, and we at once turned and strengthened the captured works. In this charge the 2d Connecticut lost their colonel, Kellogg, killed, and 386 men killed, wounded and missing. Although a new regiment they sustained