A Little Short of Boats by James A. Morgan

Author:James A. Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS036050
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781611210675
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Published: 2011-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

Events began moving even more quickly now. The 13th Mississippi’s Company D, once out of the woods, “acted a conspicuous part” in the assault that followed. “The enemy having a position near a battery of howitzers,” Captain Fletcher reported, “an order was given to charge the battery.”30

That order was given by Colonel Hunton. He had the 8th Virginia back in line but had not been resupplied with ammunition. He “distributed the few cartridges remaining so as to give each man at least one round, and ordered a charge upon the enemy.”31 Apparently unaware that Fletcher was part of the 13th Mississippi, Colonel Hunton reported that elements of the 17th and 18th were with him in this charge. “Relying almost solely upon the bayonet,” Hunton wrote about the charge itself, “they rushed upon and drove back a heavy column of the enemy just landed and captured the two howitzers.”32

It generally has been believed that the Union troops whom Hunton met were Captain Bartlett’s Company I and some few other men of the 20th Massachusetts. It seems likely, however, that part of the “heavy column of the enemy” was Major Revere’s “covering line.” Lt. John R. White, who noted Colonel Evans’ hatred for Virginians, clearly referred to two different groups of Federals when he wrote: “Our Mississippi friends rendered but little assistance but claimed a battery after we had driven the enemy from it but simply because they pulled it off while we were fighting the enemy in another quarter who were endeavoring to regain it.”33

Given the nature of the fighting, Revere’s and Bartlett’s detachments probably were near enough to each other, both in time and location, to have appeared on the field as Lieutenant White described them—even if they were not working together.

Bartlett did not mention either the howitzers or Revere’s advance when he explained why he called on his men “for one last rally.” In his post-battle letter to his mother, he wrote, “I thought it over in my mind and reasoned that we might as well be shot advancing on the enemy, as to be slaughtered like sheep at the foot of the bank.”34 Lieutenant Abbott reported that Colonel Lee had ordered a retreat but, “we were determined to have one more shot,” he wrote. “So Frank (Bartlett) ordered a charge & we rushed along, followed by all our men without an exception & by Lieut. Hallowell with about 20 men, making about 60 in all.”35 (The regimental historian confused Bartlett with Revere when he wrote that Bartlett advanced “to secure and bring back the two howitzers.”36)

Either way, Colonel Hunton made it quite clear that the 8th Virginia’s final assault was a bayonet charge launched by men with only a round or two of ammunition each. Captain Bartlett was equally clear that his men were driven back by the intense gunfire of the enemy. “If bullets had rained before,” he wrote to his mother, “they came in sheets now.”37 This hardly describes a bayonet charge.

The detached companies of the

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