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Updated: June 14, 2025
Some of the men actually got to the top, and, reaching over, dragged the enemy over the walls. General Humphrey's brigade had practically taken the fort. Their flag was flying from the walls, about a hundred men having reached the top, where the color-bearer bad planted his flag, when the staff was shot off about an inch above his hand.
The men frequently called out from one to another, using taunting epithets. Two brothers recognized each other at the same moment, and came to a tree midway between the lines, where they conversed for several minutes. The color-bearer of the Fifty-second Illinois was wounded early in the battle. A man who was under arrest for misdemeanor asked the privilege of carrying the colors.
At first, with good glasses, we could plainly see Hooker's troops driving the Confederates up the face of the mountain. All were soon lost to view in the dense timber, but emerged again on the open ground, across which the Confederates retreated at a lively pace, followed by the pursuing line, which was led by a color-bearer, who, far in advance, was bravely waving on his comrades.
One big Reb grabbed their colors, and tried to pull them out of the hands of the color-bearer. But old Captain Orr, a little, short, dried-up fellow, about sixty years old, struck him with his sword across the back of the neck, and killed him deader than a mackerel, right in his tracks.
Right and left, fire pours in on the guns, whose red flashes singe the very faces of the assailants. Peyton's quick eye sees victory wavering. Dashing towards the guns he cheers his men. As he nears the battery the Louisiana color-bearer falls dead. Henry Peyton seizes the Pelican flag, and dashes on over friends, dead and dying, as his frightened steed races into the battery.
The color-bearer did as directed and the general looked our way with a keen glance that was characteristic and took in every detail. Then instantly I knew who he was. I saluted and said, "Men, General Sheridan," and they gave him a cheer. That was the first time I had seen Sheridan except as I "looked toward" him when passing in review.
For these, when the band came marching down the street and took its place, set up a royal cheering that grew louder as Jefferson Bareaud, the color-bearer, carried the flag to the head of the procession. With the recruits marched the veterans of 1812 and the Indian wars, the one-legged cobbler stumping along beside General Trumble, who looked very dejected and old.
The Union infantry reserved their fire until the Confederates were within easy range, when the musketry crashed out with a roar, and the big guns began to fire grape and canister. On came the Confederates, the men falling by hundreds, the colors fluttering in front like a little forest; for as fast as a color-bearer was shot some one else seized the flag from his hand before it fell.
Those of our soldiers who had been killed by Russian balls showed on their corpses deep and broad wounds, for the Russian balls were much larger than ours. We saw a color-bearer, wrapped in his banner as a winding-sheet, who seemed to give signs of life, but he expired in the shock of being raised.
Here the color-bearer of a regiment, his color lying beside him, lay gasping for breath; there a colonel, his horse tied to the fence, strove to fan the air into a little life with his broad-brimmed hat. Under one little clump of cedars might be seen an exhausted group of line officers, captains and lieutenants, and under the next, a number of enlisted men who could no longer keep the road.
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