doned their battle-flag (the bearer being shot down by Issac Thomas, of Company G), which was brought off by Major H., as was also the regimental colors of the Sixth Wisconsin, which they had been compelled to leave on the field. The Wisconsin regiment falling back, and the enemy advancing, strongly re-enforced, Major H. fell back with his small party to the right wing. The enemy advanced, apparently with the intention of taking the battery, and drove the gunners from their pieces for a time, but the steady fire of my battalion checked and drove them back until the other regiments of your brigade reached the field to my right and front, when the enemy were driven to the left and rear.

The battery being no longer of service here, was removed to the hill on the left of the road, and some half an hour afterward I fell back to a piece of woods on the same side of the road, and subsequently re-joined the brigade.

My loss was 1 officer and 6 men killed, and 3 officers and 37 men wounded.*

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

THEODORE B. GATES,

Lieutenant-Colonel, Commanding.

General M. R. PATRICK,

Commanding Brigade.

Numbers 21. Reports of Brigadier Gen John Gibbon, U. S. Army, commanding Fourth Brigade, of the battles of South Mountain and Antietam.

BRIGADE HEADQUARTERS,

Camp near Sharpsburg, Md., September 20, 1862.

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the operations of my brigade in the action of the 14th instant at South Mountain, near Middletown, Md.:

On the afternoon of that day my brigade was detached from the division and ordered to report for duty to Major-General Burnside. Late in the afternoon I was ordered to move up the Hagerstown turnpike with my brigade and one section of Gibbon's battery, to attack the position of the enemy in the gorge. The Seventh Wisconsin and the Nineteenth Indiana were placed respectively on the right and left of the turnpike, to advance by the head of the company, preceded by two companies of skirmishers from the Sixth and Second Wisconsin, and followed by these regiments, formed in double column at half distance, the section of the battery under Lieutenant Stewart, Fourth Artillery, keeping on the pike a little in rear of the first line. The skirmishers soon became engaged, and were supported by the leading regiments, while our guns moved forward on the turnpike until within range of the enemy's guns, which were firing on our column from the top of the gorge, when they opened with good effect. My men steadily advanced on the enemy, posted in the woods and behind stone walls, driving him before them until he was re-enforced by three additional regiments, making five in all opposed to us.

Seeing we were likely to be outflanked on our right, I directed Lieutenant-Colonel Bragg, of the Sixth Wisconsin, to enter the wood on his right, and deploy his regiment on the right of the Seventh. This was

*But see revised statement, p. 189.