forward, and this time there was no halting or falling back. We advanced at a double-quick to within 75 yards of the encampment, fired, and charged bayonets, when the enemy began to give way and finally ended in a rout. We were entering the encampment, when we were ordered to halt by Major Buckner, and formed upon the color line of the second encampment. We remained in this position some five minutes or more, when the same officer, called "Attention," gave the command "About face, forward march," the whole line marching in admirable order.

Respectfully submitted.

H. E. TOPP,

Major, Comdg. Thirty-first Regiment Mississippi Vols.

Major JOHN A. BUCKNER,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

No. 32. Report of Col. T. B. Smith, Twentieth Tennessee Infantry, commanding Fourth Brigade.

HEADQUARTERS FIRST DIVISION,
Camp on Comite River, Louisiana, August 10, 1862.

SIR: The following is a correct report of the part the Fourth Brigade took in the late engagement in front of the city of Baton Rouge on the 5th instant:

By order of General Clark I moved the Fourth Brigade across a cane field perpendicular to the road, throwing the Fifteenth Mississippi Regiment in the woods, deployed as skirmishers, to protect the right. We then moved forward across several fields to the outskirts of the town, when the division was halted, till I was ordered to move by the left flank to the road, and then by the front till they fired on me, which was returned. At that moment we were not more than 20 yards from their lines. About three rounds from our men put them to flight, the for being to thick we could not see more than twenty steps. We were then on a line with their camps on the left of the road and the firing had ceased, when General Clark ordered me to fall back in the ravine some hundred yards to the rear. I about-faced the brigade and marched back in good order, walking my men in a gully. Soon after the Second Brigade moved obliquely to the left and engaged them on the left of the road. The right of the Second Brigade began to give way, and in twenty or thirty minutes, I suppose, I moved forward to their support and to their right, engaging the enemy, and a general forward movement was made by our division. About the time we had reached the tents and top of the hill orders came to fall back to the bridge, where the stampede had taken place that morning, which we did in as good order as we could after having so severely engaged them.

I would beg leave to mention the names of Lieutenant-Colonel Moore, of the Nineteenth Tennessee; Captain Hughes, of the Twenty-second Mississippi, and Adjutant Fitzpatrick, of the Twenty-second Mississippi, as acting gallantly all through the engagement. Captain Hughes fell in the last charge at the head of his men. The Fifteenth Mississippi was