most fatiguing march, and that they were removed from one portion of the field to another very rapidly during both days, I will not be thought to express myself too strongly when I say that they did their duty as officers and men gallantly, and I may well say efficiently.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

FRANKLIN H. CLACK,

Major Confederate Guards Response Battalion.

Brig. Gen. PATTON ANDERSON,

Commanding Second Brigade, Ruggles' Division.

No. 179 Reports of Capt. W. Irving Hodgson, Fifth Company, Washington [Louisiana] Artillery.

HDQRS. FIFTH CO., BATT. WASHINGTON ARTILLERY, Camp Moore, Corinth, Miss., April 9, 1862.

GENERAL: In accordance with usage I hereby report to you the action of my battery in the battle of the 6th and 7th instant:

My battery, consisting of two 6-pounder smooth-bore guns, two 6-pounder rifled guns, and two 12-pounder howitzers; total, six pieces, fully equipped with ammunition, horses, and men, entered the field just in the rear of the Twentieth Louisiana Regiment [the right regiment of your brigade] on Sunday morning, the 6th instant, on the hill overlooking, from the southwest, the encampment of the enemy immediately in front of it and to the northeast, being the first camp attacked and taken by our army.

At 7.10 a.m. we opened fire on their camp with our full battery of six guns, firing shell and spherical case-shot, soon silencing one of their batteries and filling the enemy with consternation. After firing some 40 rounds thus we were directed by General Ruggles to shell a camp immediately upon the left of the one just mentioned, and in which there was a battery from which the shot and shell were thrown on all sides of us. With two howitzers and two rifled guns, under Lieutenants Slocomb and Vaught, assisted by two pieces from Captain Shoup's battery, we soon silenced their guns, and had the extreme gratification of seeing our brave and gallant troops charge through these two camps, running the enemy before them at the point of the bayonet. At this point I lost your command, and on the order of General Ruggles to go wherever I heard the most firing, I passed over the first camp captured through a third, and on to a fourth, in which your troops were doing sad havoc to the enemy. I formed in battery on your extreme left, in the avenue of the camp, and commenced firing with canister from four guns into the tents of the enemy, only some 50 yards off. It was at this point I suffered most. The skirmishers of the enemy, lying in their tents only a stone's throw from us, cut holes through their tents near the ground, and with "white powder," or some preparation which discharged their arms without report, played a deadly fire in among my cannoneers, killing 3 men, wounding 7 or 8, besides killing some of my most valuable horses, mine among the rest. As soon as we were well formed in battery and got well to work we saw them creeping from their tents and making for the woods, and immediately afterwards

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