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

[60] be seen from across the river. Every precaution was taken to avoid noise. Commands were given in a whisper, the muskets were left unloaded and without their bayonets. The teams drawing the pontoons were left out of hearing and the boats were brought down by hand and launched silently. As silently they were filled with soldiers, and rowed across the river rapidly. The first notice the pickets on the other side had of them, was when the boats grounded on the shore. Then a scattering fire was begun which caught those of us who were crossing in the second turn of the boats. It was not a pleasing sound to hear the bullets plumping into the water on all sides.

Those of the pickets captured said that a regiment had been in the trenches along the river bank all night and had just marched away when the crossing began. The writer was in the first boat of the second brigade that crossed, and on landing followed closely after Colonel Seaver, who pushed his way up the bank, and roughly commanded several men who were crouching under the brow of the slope, “Get out of the way of my men,” and immediately upon reaching the top threw the advance companies into skirmish formation, and sent us out after the retiring enemy as far as the edge of the cut made by Deep Run — the same ground we had occupied during the previous campaign.

The part taken by the 121st is best told by Comrade Beckwith.

We crossed the Rappahannock at Deep Bottom, near the place of our former crossing, and the movement of troops on the opposite side of the river from right to left made our position a mystery. We occupied some earthworks, and to our right and front there was considerable picket firing and a number of our men were hit by sharpshooters. The story went around that a woman would come out of a house near the