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[367] her could not sufficiently protect her, and she soon began to leak in every part; her commander had barely time to take her back toward the right bank, when she sank before the eyes of the inhabitants of the town, who had come out of their shelters to witness this exciting spectacle. Fifteen men were drowned and twenty-five killed or wounded. Nevertheless, Woods succeeded in pushing his trench forward as far as the border of the stream, and posted himself on a small hillock, whence his sharpshooters commanded the battery. He thus compelled the enemy to abandon it; but the stream did not allow him to go any farther, and he confined himself to the construction of some batteries which were armed with eight-inch guns supplied by the navy. Thanks to a bend in the ground, Tuttle, who was on the left of Steele, succeeded in descending into the valley which separated him from the enemy; he traversed it, bringing with him, perpendicularly to his works, a double sap, covered with blinds and fascines of cane; then, ascending the opposite slopes, where he was concealed by the inclination of the ground, he succeeded in taking position at a distance of thirty yards from the enemy. Sherman entrusted his principal approach to Blair: it was directed against the bastion which the latter had already attacked on the 22d of May on the Cemetery road. He succeeded in planting twenty-four pieces of artillery within four hundred yards of this work. Thence a trench was pushed as far as a solitary tree where the road passes nine hundred feet farther along the ridge: a strong drilling-place was constructed at this point, connected with the batteries by means of several approaches. A double sap prolonged the approaches by following, on the right, the flank of the last hillock, which was crowned by the bastion: coming round again upon the latter, it brought the besiegers within fifteen yards of the ditch. Ransom's brigade occupied the front of McArthur's division, forming McPherson's right. As we have stated, it had before it ravines difficult of access. Roads were built which enabled it to communicate with Blair and a line of bastions constructed on the opposite slope without difficulty. It could come out of these fortifications to support the principal attack directed against the bastion on the Cemetery road.
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1883.
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