James D. Porter, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, Tennessee
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

‘ [208] his right and rear. Leader, officers and men alike dis. played their fitness for the trial to which they were subjected. I cannot forbear to mention Lieutenant Waggoner, of the Twenty-third Tennessee, who went along through a storm of fire and pulled down a white flag which a small, isolated body of our men (stragglers from another command) had raised, receiving a wound in the act. The brigade, holding its ground nobly, lost more than one-fourth of its entire number. At length, Johnson, having brushed the enemy from his right flank in the woods, cleared his front and rested his troops in the shelter of the outer works.’ Col. H. R. Keeble, Seventeenth and Twenty-third Tennessee, a veteran soldier of great distinction, in his official report dated May 22, 1864, stated: ‘My orders from General Johnson were to move down the turnpike by the left flank until I reached the outer line of fortifications, when I would halt, front and move forward in connection with General Ransom's division. Long before I reached the outer line of fortifications, I discovered that the enemy were still occupying our works (heretofore constructed and occupied), with a battery of five pieces (Parrott guns) planted in the center of the turnpike, a little beyond the fortifications. We, however, continued to move forward under a shower of grape, canister and minie balls, which swept up the turnpike. Reaching the trenches, line was immediately formed confronting the enemy, and here commenced and raged for two hours one of the most desperate actions in which I have ever been engaged. The enemy were in strong force in our trenches, and their battery, already named, played upon us furiously. They were vastly outnumbering me, and nothing but the thickness of the wall between us. They had also succeeded in throwing a force upon my right flank and rear, from which we received a galling fire. Having thus, in a measure, surrounded us, they frequently demanded our surrender, which was met by yells of defiance and volleys from my ’