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Updated: June 6, 2025
Reconnoitring parties sent toward Kinston on the 11th showed that only a rear-guard occupied that town and that we could occupy it when we pleased. General Couch joined us on the 12th, and Hoke having sent in a flag of truce offering to exchange prisoners, of whom we had nearly 400, I sent Major Dow of my staff with General Schofield's answer declining to do so.
A day's rest, and the Battalion was rear-guard to the Brigade as far as el Butani, where the 5th A. & S.H. and the 7th H.L.I. were set to clear the enemy from their positions on the ridges south-west of Esdud. The 6th H.L.I. were in support and our Battalion was not called upon.
You ought to be leading those horses over that stony ground; but I suppose the general wants to make a show and let it seem as if we were in full retreat." "Will the chariots go next?" asked Marcus. "Yes, boy, of course, with the baggage behind them, and all the strength of the infantry to form the rear-guard. You can see that for yourself, for the foot-men haven't moved."
As soon as I learned that Davis was across I pushed on, but the delay had permitted the enemy to pull his rear-guard up on the mountain, and rendered nugatory all further efforts to hurt him materially, our only returns consisting in forcing him to relinquish a small amount of transportation and forage at the mouth of the pass just beyond Cowan, a station on the line of the Nashville and Chattanooga railroad.
Again the enemy pressed with vigour, but this time there were ten companies on the spur instead of two, and the Buffs, who became rear-guard, held everything at a distance with their Lee-Metford rifles. At a quarter to five the troops were clear of the hills and we looked about us. While this second attack was being carried out, the afternoon had slipped away.
By night Thomas's head of column ran up against a strong rear-guard intrenched at Smyrna camp-ground, six miles below Marietta, and there on the next day we celebrated our Fourth of July, by a noisy but not a desperate battle, designed chiefly to hold the enemy there till Generals McPherson and Schofield could get well into position below him, near the Chattahoochee crossings.
Their retreat was opposed at a bridge of a single arch over a torrent, by a party of Portuguese peasantry, but after two repulses the French, led by Major Doulong, carried it. They were just in time, for in the afternoon the British came upon a strong rear-guard left at Salamende.
I was more than convinced that heavy reenforcements were coming to Vicksburg; whether from Pemberton at Grenada, Bragg in Tennessee, or from other sources, I could not tell; but at no point did the enemy assume the offensive; and when we drew off our rear-guard, on the morning of the 2d, they simply followed up the movement, timidly.
This defence had been materially assisted, and the Federal troops enabled to gain ground at every repulse of the rebels, by the arrival of several regiments of infantry and two of his best batteries, sent in haste by McClellan from his main position at Malvern Hill, so soon as the roar of artillery announced that the fight had fairly begun with the rear-guard.
But all was in vain. For leagues round no living object was visible, except that long column, silently and slowly winding on through the distance, like an army of spectres. My diminished squadron had at length become almost the only rear-guard. From a hundred and fifty as fine fellows as ever sat a charger, we were now reduced to a third.
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