Number 4. Report of Brigadier General Michael K. Lawler, u. S. Army, commanding SECOND Brigade, fourteenth DIVISION, including operations May 2-22. HDQRS. 2nd BRIGADE, 14TH, DIVISION, 13TH ARMY CORPS, Camp, in rear of Vicksburg, MISS., May 26, 1863.

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following field report of the operations of my brigade from the dat I assumed command o it at Port Gibson, MISS, May 2, 1863, to the present time. In it I have included the distances marched, the time in which the march was made, the battles fought, the number killed and wounded, the number of prisoner taken, the number of cannon, small-arms, and other stores with kind and quality of all property. For a report of the operations of the brigade from the date of its departure from Milliken's Bend to May 2, 1863, you are respectfully referred to the report of Colonel C. L. Harris, eleventh Wisconsin Volunteers, accompanying this,*and to the able report of Colonel William M. Stone, twenty-SECOND Iowa Volunteers, which is already in your possession. On May 2, at Port Gibson, MISS., in accordance with General Orders Number 15, from DIVISION headquarters, I assumed command of the SECOND Brigade, composed then of four infantry regiments and a battery, viz the Twenty-first, twenty-SECOND, and Twenty-THIRD Iowa, and Eleventh Wisconsin Volunteers, marched for Willow Springs early May 3, the Eleventh Wisconsin, colonel C. L. Harris commanding, having been left behind to hold Port Gibson until further orders. On arriving at the south fork of Bayou Pierre, I received orders to discontinue-general commanding the DIVISION to report my brigade at the crossing of Bayou Pierre, to watch the line of the bayou, the new bridge constructed over it, to protect the rear of and hold the town of Port Gibson, with all of which I fully complied. Posting two regiments, the Twenty-SECOND and Twenty-first Iowa Volunteers, and two pieces of artillery at the railroad and suspension bridges over the bayou, and the Twenty-SECOND and Twenty-first Iowa Volunteers, and two pieces of artillery in the town of Port Gibson, we remained in quiet occupation of the above line until Monday [Tuesday], MAY 5 subsisting upon the country. In the mean time our army transportation was pushed forward. The rebel wounded at Port Gibson and near the battle-field were paroled, and our own wounded removed to the general hospital. When everything had been brought up from Bruinsburg, I move with my command, in obedience to orders, to join the DIVISION of the Willow Springs road, bringing up with me all the stragglers from the advance army corps, over one thousand stand of small-arms at Thompson's Hill. The brigade reached Willow Springs at 9 p. m., and encamped at the crossroads. On the 6th, orders were received to send a regiment back to Port Gibson to protect our ambulance corps from a raid of rebel cavalry reported in that vicinity. Accordingly, the Eleventh Wisconsin Volunteers, colonel Harris, was started at once on the road to Port Gibson, but before reaching that place the colonel learned that our ambulances were coming up, and that was nothing on that road in their rear

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*Not found.

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