advantage to either, until dark. At the close oi the engagement Hood’s division held the hill where the battery had been taken, and the ridge to its left — our right extending across Devil’s Den and well up on the northwestern slope of Bound Top.
During the night this line was strengthened by the construction of a breastwork of the loose stones that abounded all along the positions occupied by the troops, and the light of the next morning disclosed the fact that the Federal troops in front of us had improved their time in the same way. In fact, all through the night we could hear them at work as the rocks were dropped in place on the work, and no doubt they heard us just as distinctly, while we were engaged in the same life-preserving operation.
Though the losses had been severe on both sides, comparatively few prisoners had been taken. But early in the night, in the confusion resulting from the fight over such rugged ground, and the darkness of the wooded mountain-side, men of both armies, in search of their commands, occasionally wandered Into the opposing picketlines and were captured. Many of the Federal wounded were left in our lines on the ground from which their troops had been forced back, and some of ours remained in their hands in the most advanced positions which we had reached and had been compelled to abandon. Among these latter was Colonel Powell of the 5th Texas regiment, who was shot through the body and afterward died. Powell was a stout, portly man, with a full beard, resembling in many respects General Longstreet, and the first impression of his captors was that they had taken that officer. Indeed, it was asserted positively by some of the prisoners we picked up during the night that Longstreet was badly wounded and a prisoner in their hands, and they obstinately refused to credit our statements to the contrary. . . .
LONGSTREET’S ATTACK AT THE PEACH ORCHARD AND WHEAT-FIELD.
BY J. B. KERSHAW, MAJOR-GEN־., C. S. A. Commanding Kershaw’s Brigade at Gettysburg.
lina regiments, and the Third South Carolina battalion, constituted, with Semmes’s, Wofford’s,
LIEUTENANT BAYARD WILKESON HOLDING HIS BATTERY TO ITS WORK IN AN EXPOSED POSITION.
to train every gun upon him. Wilkeson was brought to the ground, desperately wounded, and his horse was killed. He was carried hy the Confederates to the Alms House (or dragged himself there—the accounts differ), where he died that night. Just before lie expired, it is said.be asked for water; a canteen was brought to him; as he took it a wounded soldier lying next to him begged, “For God’s sake give me some 1 ” He passed the canteen untouched to the man, who drank every drop it contained. Wilkeson smiled on the man, turned slightly, and expired.
Note.—The death of Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson, who commanded Battery G, Fourth u. S. Artillery, was one of the most heroic episodes of the fight. He was but nineteen years old and was the son of Samuel Wilkeson, who, as correspondent of the “New York Times,” was at Meade’s headquarters during the fight. Gen. John B. Gordon, finding it impossible to advance his Confederate division in the face of the fire of Wilkeson’s battery, and realizing that if the officer on the horse could be disposed of tlie battery would not remain, directed two batteries of bis command
UNION DEAD WEST OF THE SEMINARY. 196
soon exposed it to a flank attack on the right by fresh troops (Vincent’s brigade), rendering it necessary to retire it to the general line.
While our center and right wing were engaged as I have described, Anderson’s brigade, on the left, was subjected to great annoyance and loss by movements of the enemy upon its left flank, being frequently compelled to change the front of the regiments on that flank to repel attacks from that direction.
Up to this time I had seen nothing of McLaws’s division, which was to have extended our left and to have moved to the attack at the same time. I therefore halted my line, which had become broken and disorganized by the roughness of the ground over which it had been fighting, and placing it in as advantageous a position as possible for receiving any attack that the Federáis might he disposed to make, I hurried back to the ridge from which we had originally advanced. I found MeLaws still in position there, his troops suffering considerably from a severe fire of artillery from the opposite hills.
I was informed hy General Kershaw, who held the right of this division, that although he understood the general instructions that the forward movement was to be taken up from the right, he had not yet received the order to move from his division commander. I pointed out the position of Hood’s division, and urged the necessity of immediate support on its left. General Kershaw requested me to designate the point on which his right flank should be directed, and promptly moved to the attack, the movement being taken up by the whole division.
When Hood’s division first attacked, General Meade, alarmed for the safety of his left wing, and doubtless fully alive to the importance of holding so vital a point as Bound Top and its adjacent spurs, commenced sending reinforcements to the threatened points. We encountered some of these in our first advance, and others were arriving as MeLaws came up on our left. In its advance this division extended from the “ Peach Orchard” near the Emmitsburg road, on its left, to the “Wheat-field ” north of the hill on which we had captured the Federal battery, where its right wing connected with my left. As MeLaws advanced, we again moved forward on his right, and the fighting continued in “ see-saw” style—first one side and then the other gaining ground or losing it, with small