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Updated: September 28, 2025
Just before the head of the column came near the creek, the movement was perceived by the Confederates, who immediately opened on the negroes a sharp fire of musketry from the rifle-pits on the detached bluff; at the same moment the field guns opened with shell and shrapnel from the ridge behind, and as the men struggled on through the creek and up the farther bank they became exposed to the enfilade fire of the columbiads.
As soon as I could recover myself I thought of Havelock and Forsyth, with the hope that they would not follow; nor did they, for having witnessed my experience, they wisely concluded that, after all, they did not care so much to see the French rifle-pits.
In the skirts of the woods lying beyond the foot of the hills, long lines of rifle-pits had been dug these, and the woods beyond, occupied by a brigade of Maine and Wisconsin infantry and a portion of Berdan's celebrated regiment, to act as sharp-shooters.
The general was off in an incredibly short time, going in advance himself to keep his men from firing while they were working their way through the abatis intervening between them and the enemy. The outer line of rifle-pits was passed, and the night of the 15th General Smith, with much of his division, bivouacked within the lines of the enemy.
Gibbon gained ground much nearer the enemy than that which he left, and here he intrenched and held fast. Wright's corps moving in two lines captured the outer rifle-pits in their front, but accomplished nothing more. Smith's corps also gained the outer rifle-pits in its front.
These men he met in the trenches were then not necessarily his friends. To-day they are not necessarily his friends. They are the men the free life of the rifle-pits enabled him to know and to understand as the settled relations of home life and peace would never have permitted.
As soon as I could recover myself I thought of Havelock and Forsyth, with the hope that they would not follow; nor did they, for having witnessed my experience, they wisely concluded that, after all, they did not care so much to see the French rifle-pits.
They recoiled from this toil and this double fire. The Forty-fifth Illinois was sent to reinforce Morrison. The four regiments started again, forced their way still farther up the abattis, and were again repelled. Undaunted, they rushed up the hill-side the third time. Part of the command pierced through the abattis and reached the rifle-pits. The summit of the rifle-pits was a blaze of musketry.
Yet with all this, and despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation, the survivors kept up their pluck undiminished, and during a lull succeeding the third repulse dug into the loose soil till the entire party was pretty well protected by rifle-pits.
And here is that Christian nurse who followed the line of battle close up to the rifle-pits, and kindled her fire and prepared hot drinks for dying men; who, when asked by the colonel who told her to build those fires, made answer: "God Almighty, sir!" and went right on to fulfill her vision.
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