Incidents of the battle of Alleghany.
A letter from Camp Alleghany states that in the bloody fight of the 14th,
Col. Johnson appeared upon the field in citizen's dress gave his commands in the most emphatic manner, and led the fierce charges in person.
After the
Yankees had been driven to the woods, the Lee Battery of
Lynchburg opened upon them with marked effect.
Capt P. B. Anderson, who commanded this battery, seeing a number of men partially concealed by fallen timber, supposed they were our pickets, and called out to them to come into the ditches.
Hardly were the words out of his mouth, when a shower of musketry was poured upon him, and the noble old hero fell from his horse and died in about fifteen minutes. The command of the battery now devolved upon
Lt. W. W. Hardwicse, of
Lynchburg, who directed the shots admirably, and exhibited much personal bravery.
Capt. Miller's battery, from
Rockbridge, opened upon the enemy in the thicket, with cannister shot, and sent many a poor Hessian to his last account.
From another letter, addressed to a gentleman in this city, we glean the following incidents:
‘
In the second charge, while leading in the front,
Lieut. Lewis Thompson received a shot through his body and another in his arm, just as he had shouted ‘"Come on my brave boys, follow me!"’ He fell into the arms of
Col. Johnson, who says he was as brave a man as he ever saw.
Capt. Thompson also behaved with great gallantry.
He was surrounded once, but extricated himself, receiving many bullets through his clothing, but sustaining no personal injury.
It is stated of
Capt. Anderson, the veteran hero who fell early in the engagement, that this was his
fifty-eighth battle.
Col. Johnson said on the battle field, that he could storm
Arlington Heights with 10,000 such troops as the boys from the
Northwest.
Johnson was always in the thickest of the fight, sometimes with a club in his hand, but generally armed with a musket; and another officer has since remarked that he could load and shoot faster than any man he saw.
The enemy, in the early part of the engagement, got between our commissary stores and the
Confederate troops, and afterwards two dead Yankees were found close to our tents, who are said to have been shot by a sick man laying in one of them.
Many of our men had bullet holes through their clothing, and it is miraculous that our list of killed and wounded is so small.
Fifty-five of the enemy were buried by our troops, and some of them recognized as ‘"Union men,"’ from
Marion county, by their old neighbors.
It is stated by one who saw a good many of the dead
Hessians, that none of them were shot lower than the breast, and many through the heart.
A little hero named
Musgrove, from
Ritchie county, was shot through the arm by a man concealed behind a log. He immediately got a friend to load his musket, and jumping over a pile of brush shot the rascal who had wounded him, and secured his
oil-cloth coat, with a name on it.
Every account which we have seen concurs in representing the rout of the enemy to have been complete, though it is not probable that we shall ever learn his actual loss.
’
