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Updated: May 13, 2025
The rifle balls whistled through the woods, clipping boughs, barking the trees, and hurling the Federal pickets back on their support. In front of the abatis had been planted a battery of four guns. The grey men had fixed their eyes on them. General Naglee saw their purpose and threw his four thousand men into the open field to meet them.
In front, for some distance, too, the timber had been felled and an abatis thus formed. A few hours after the arrival of the troops on the line marked out by Lee, they were rooted behind excellent breastworks, with forest, stream, and abatis in front, to delay the assailing force under the fire of small-arms and cannon.
"The devil invented abatis, just after he invented hell, and as an improvement on it, and just before he invented secession," Shorty judged hotly. "When we git through them abatis there I'm goin' to kill everything I find, just to learn 'em to stop sich heathenish work. It's sneakin' murder, not war." "When we get through," murmured Alf Russell dolefully. "How many of us will ever get through?"
The best defended camp was surrounded by bush abatis and flanked by half-moon sungas of boulder-stone work, which held the sentries. The most approved permanent camps or "posts" were mud serais flanked by bastions at the alternate angles and overlooking a yard or "kraal." These were established about ten miles apart, to protect communications, and furnished frequent patrols.
He gazed with some intentness at the English barricades of the two highways, two large abatis of trees, that on the road to Genappe above La Haie-Sainte, armed with two cannon, the only ones out of all the English artillery which commanded the extremity of the field of battle, and that on the road to Nivelles where gleamed the Dutch bayonets of Chasse's brigade.
On the 23d of June I telegraphed to General Halleck this summary, which I cannot again better state: We continue to press forward on the principle of an advance against fortified positions. The whole country is one vast fort, and Johnston must have at least fifty miles of connected trenches, with abatis and finished batteries. We gain ground daily, fighting all the time.
They have a line of works with abatis in front, and a fort on the hill there to the right, as you can see by looking up against the sky. You will not allow any fires to be made or lights to be shown. The other regiments will come up and form on your right and left, and you will be ready to attack and carry the line immediately in front of you the moment that it is light enough to see to move.
From various parts of our lines the houses inside of Atlanta were plainly visible, though between us were the strong parapets, with ditch, fraise, chevaux-de-frise, and abatis, prepared long in advance by Colonel Jeremy F. Gilmer, formerly of the United States Engineers. McPherson had the Fifteenth Corps astride the Augusta Railroad, and the Seventeenth deployed on its left.
A student of ancient tactics would have found there all the old defenses in coral caltrops, and abatis, molded in dark-gray coral, battered and shot-marked. It was a dream of a sunken city wall of old Syracuse, and conjured up a vision of the hoary Archimedes upon it before the inundation, directing the destruction, by his burning-glass, of the enemy's ships.
The tired horses had been staked out to graze, a temporary abatis erected, scouting-parties sent off in opposite directions, and at last the frosty air grew mild and mellow over the savory steam of broiling steaks and coffee smoking on beds of coals.
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