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Updated: June 17, 2025
Colonel Nelson A. Miles, who in the battle of Fredericksburg led them to the useless slaughter at the foot of Marye's Heights, until a bloody wound in his neck spared the regiment a desperate attempt to get a little nearer than other regiments to the invincible lines of the enemy. "See them at Chancellorsville, with Miles again leading in a brilliant fight on the skirmish line.
That wing of the army had not suffered as heavily as the right, which had recoiled with such frightful slaughter from Marye's Hill; but the repulse of General Meade in their own front had been equally decisive, and the non-success of the right must have reacted on the left, discouraging that also.
Of that noble column the skirmishers of the Seventy-seventh first reached the heights of Marye's Hill, the Thirty-third New York, in line of battle, followed, and then the Sixth Vermont, the other regiments of the two brigades being but a moment behind. But the work was not all done yet. On our left was an earthwork of strong profile, from which now the rebels turned their guns upon us.
There were but nine thousand men holding it against forty thousand, but it was afternoon before the grey lines slowly gave way and Sedgwick's victorious troops poured over the hill toward Lee's lines. Hooker had asked him to appear at daylight. The long rows and mangled heaps of the dead left on Marye's bloody slopes was sufficient answer to all inquiries as to his delay.
Had Lee descended from his ridge and advanced into the plain to attack, this large number of guns would have greeted him with a rapid and destructive fire, which must have inflicted upon him a loss as nearly heavy as he had inflicted upon General Burnside at Marye's Hill. From such a result he naturally shrunk.
And Nathan Cunningham, with colors flying over his head, passed on and joined his regiment. His comrades in arms still tell with pride of his brave deed and of the generous act of a foe. Richard Kirtland was a sergeant in the Second Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers. The day after the great battle of Fredericksburg, Kershaw's brigade occupied the road at the foot of Marye's Hill.
General Early had been driven from the ridge at Fredericksburg; but no sooner had General Sedgwick marched toward Chancellorsville, than Early returned and seized upon Marye's Heights again. He was thus in General Sedgwick's rear, and ready to prevent him from recrossing the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg.
Sedgwick, at eleven o'clock in the morning, had carried Marye's Hill, and, driving Early before him, was moving up the plank road. Wilcox' brigade of Anderson's division, then at Banks' Ford, was ordered to retard the advance of the hostile column. McLaws was detached to Salem Church.
They had not made the slightest impression upon Marye's Hill and the slopes were strewn with many thousands of their dead and wounded, including officers of all ranks, from generals down. The Union army was now divided into two portions, each in the face of an insuperable task. But Burnside, burning with chagrin, was unwilling to draw off his army.
Pickett himself was here among the defenders, having just been sent to help the men on Marye's Hill. Up went the men through the winter twilight, lighted now by the blaze of so many cannon and rifles pouring down upon them a storm of lead and steel, through which no human beings could pass.
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