rail fort, ordered back to the mills with orders to hold the ford. Skirmishing in front. About noon of the 19th, ordered to the front where the battle was raging. Soon found the foe on every front; fought at every point of the compass; no confusion; changed front forward and to the rear in good order under fire. My guides took their position upon the line, as was their duty upon drill, and gallant sergeants of Companies A and B were wounded while in their positions with their guns inverted. My men were steady and obeyed my orders. My loss was 1 killed and 9 wounded. We captured 118 prisoners and sent them to the rear in charge of Lieutenant Newton, Company B, without a missing man unaccounted for. We fell back to our line and slept upon arms on the left of Bradley's battery and the right of the Seventeenth Indiana Mounted Infantry.

At 3 a.m. on the 20th, moved 1 1/2 miles to the left, near department headquarters. At 6 a.m. moved to the front on general line of battle; deployed Companies A and B in charge of Major Brennan, who commanded the entire brigade line of skirmishers; severe fighting of skirmishers and conspicuous gallantry of Captains Powell and Barnett, and their officers and men, in driving the enemy; advancing through open ground, and the enemy, under cover of heavy timber, freely adding canister to the rapid musketry, and just at the juncture when my bold skirmishers had quieted our front, we were ordered to move by the left flank to the support of wavering lines in the neighborhood of Brannan or Van Cleve. Thousands of stragglers passed through our lines, but, every line officer being at his post and having no dodgers in difficulties, we escaped the avalanche until it struck my extreme right with a column of artillery and a pell-mell mob. But, with their usual clannishness, the dissevered parts of Companies A and C clung together under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Bullitt, assisted by Adjutant Hunt.

And just here I must remark that both of these officers behaved gallantly in gathering from the retreating mass some 400 stragglers, which they rallied upon the hill, which developed itself as part of the important key to the safety of the army. Being at the head of my regiment, I was not aware (at the time) of the aforesaid unavoidable rupture on my right. We moved onward to the left until we reached the right of Palmer (I believe). There we halted and built a barricade of rails. But as fate decrees for us, we never await the enemy, but go in search of him.

Under orders, and with the cheering presence of the peerless Harker, we moved by the flank to the right and entered the fatal field where a crouching enemy awaited us with a cross-fire. We moved forward in line of battle (by order) and halted at a fence,and instantly discovered the enemy in heavy lines upon our right flank. As promptly as possible we changed direction by file to the right at a double-quick, but before I could effect the disposition, we received a galling fire from two sides of a right-angle triangle, we confronting both faces. We returned the fire with deadly effect, but there was necessary confusion consequent upon the position and the fatality of the enemy's fire, which is evinced by the fact that just upon this ground I lost about 80 officers and men killed and wounded. Being overrun by hundreds of stragglers and the confusion increasing, so soon as the enemy were driven form this field, I took my flag and formed my regiment in the woods immediately adjacent, and moved, under Colonel Harker's orders, to the right upon the hill-top, and found a heavy force advancing, upon we fired and ceased