628 Series I Volume XXIV-I Serial 36 - Vicksburg Part I
Page 628 | Mississippi, WEST TENNESSEE, ETC. Chapter XXXVI. |
the end. I am also indebted to the gallant Lieutenant Hill, Company B, eighth Indiana, for acting as aide temporarily.
Our list of killed and wounded is attached, and made a part of this report. *
I have the honor to be, captain, with great respect, your obedient servant,
WM. P. BENTON,
Brigadier General, Comdg. First Brigadier, Fourteenth Div., THIRTEENTH A. C.
Captain C. H. DYER, Assistant Adjutant-General, Fourteenth DIVISION.
Number 19. Report of Colonel William M. Stone, Twenty-SECOND Iowa Infantry, commanding SECOND Brigade. CAMP near PORT GIBSON, May 2, 1863.
SIR: I have the honor to report the part taken by the SECOND Brigade of the Fourteenth DIVISION - consisting of the Eleventh Wisconsin, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Moore [Wood?]; the Twenty-first Iowa, commanded by Colonel Merrill; the Twenty-SECOND Iowa, commanded by Major Atherton; the Twenty-THIRD Iowa, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Glasgow, and the First Iowa Battery, commanded by Captain Griffiths - in the bloody engagement of yesterday, on Anderson's Hill.
About 10 o'clock on the night of the 30th ultimo, when the Fourteenth DIVISION was on its march from Bruinsburg to Port Gibson, the SECOND Brigade being in advance, I was called upon to take command of it, and went immediately to the front. My instructions were to reach Port Gibson at as early an hour as possible, and occupy the several bridges across Bayou Pierre at that place. Four companies of the Twenty-first Iowa and one howitzer from Captain Griffith's battery were sent forward as an advance guard. Two of these companies, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Dunlap, a brave and skillful officer, were deployed as skirmishers, and the other two, under command of Major "Van Anda, to whom I am under great obligations for his coolness and promptitude, were left back as a support to the howitzer; the balance of the brigade, the Twenty-first Iowa leading, moved in column in supporting distance behind.
The road over which we marched passed through a country much broken by gorges and ravines, and thickly covered with tall timber, underbrush, and cane, so peculiar to the Southern country. While moving forward in this order, and about three-quarters of a mile from Magnolia Church, our skirmishers were fired upon by a heavy picket force of the enemy, posted in an angle of the road. I immediately formed the advance companies in line on the right and left of the road, and ordered Colonel Merrill forward with the other companies of his regiment. I then moved them slowly forward, covered by skirmishers, until I became satisfied that we had not yet reached the immediate vicinity of the enemy's main force. We them moved forward in column in the previous order, and as our skirmishers reached the head of the lane in front of Magnolia Church they received a tremendous volley of musketry from the enemy, strongly posted on the right and left of the
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*Embodied in revised statement, p. 584.
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