CAPTURE OF A PART OF THE BURNING UNION BREASTWORKS, MAY 6. From a sketch made at the time.
THROWING UP BREASTWORKS IN THE WILDERNESS. From a sketch made at the time.
broken by a few scattered shots on the north of the road, which were answered by a volley from Mahone’s line on the south side. The firing in their front, and the appearance of troops on the road whom they failed to recognize as friends through the intervening timber, had drawn a single volley, which lost to them all the fruits of the splendid work they had just done. General Jenkins was killed and Longstreet seriously wounded by our own men. The troops who were following them faced quickly toward the firing and were about to return it; but when General Kershaw called out, “ They are friends,” every musket was lowered and the men dropped upon the ground to avoid the fire.
The head of the attack had fallen, and for a time the movements of the Confederates were paralyzed. Lee came forward and directed the dispositions for a new attack, but the change of commanders after the fall of Longstreet, and the resumption of the thread of operations,occasioned a delay of several hours, and then the tide had turned, and we received only hard knocks instead of victory. When at 4 o’clock an attack was made upon the Federal line along the Brock road, it was found strongly fortified, and stubbornly defended. The log breastworks had taken fire during the battle, and at one point separated the combatants by a wall of fire and smoke which neither could pass. Part of Field’s division captured the works in their front, but were forced to relinquish them for want of support. Meanwhile Burnside’s corps, which had reinforced Hancock during the day, made a vigorous attack on the north of the Orange Plank road. Law’s (Alabama) and Perry’s (Florida) brigades were being forced back, when, Heth’s division coming to their assistance, they assumed the offensive, driving Burnside’s troops beyond the extensive line of breastworks constructed previous to their advance. . . .
brigade was moved forward on the Plank road to renew the attack, supported by Kershaw’s division, while the flanking column was to come into position on its right. The latter were now in line south of the road and almost parallel to it. Longstreet and Kershaw rode with General Jenkins at the head of his brigade as it pressed forward, when suddenly the quiet that had reigned for some moments was
This partial victory had been a comparatively easy one. The signs of demoralization and even panic among the troops of Hancock’s left wing, who hadbeenhurled back by Mahone’s flank attack, were too plain to be mistaken by the Confederates, who believed that Chancellorsville was about to be repeated. General Longstreet rode forward and prepared to press his advantage. Jenkins’s fresh
only a few moments when their former owners [Webb’s brigade] came back to claim them. The Federals were driven back to a second line several hundred yards beyond, which was also taken. This advanced position was attacked in front and on the right from across the Orange Plank road, and Law’s Alabamians “advanced backward” without standing on the order of their going, until they reached the first line of logs, now in their rear. As their friends in blue still insisted on claiming their property, and were advancing to take it, they were met by a counter-charge and again driven beyond the second line. Thiswasheld against a determined attack, in which the Federal General Wadsworth was shot from his horse as he rode up close to the right of the line on thePlankroad. The position again becoming untenable by reason of the movements of Federal troops on their right, Law’s men retired a second time to the works they had first captured. And so, for more than two hours, the storm of battle swept to and fro, in some places passing several times over the same ground, and settling down at length almost where it had begun the day before.
About 10 o’clock it was ascertained that the Federal left flank rested only a short distance south of the Orange Plank road, which offered a favorable opportunity for a turning movement in that quarter. General Longstreet at once moved Mahone’s, Wofford’s, Anderson’s, and Davis’s brigades, the whole under General Mahone, around this end of the Federal line. Forming at right angles to it, they attacked in flank and rear, while a general advance was made in front. So far the fight had been one of anvil and hammer. But this first display of tactics at once changed the face of the field. The Federal left wing was rolled up in confusion toward the Plank road and then back upon the Brock road.
UNION TROOPS CROSSING THE RAPIDAN AT GERMANNA FORD, MAY 4, 1861.