SIEGE OF ATLANTA
have used the troops where I was that day, Atlanta could have been captured much more easily than it was six weeks later. At about six o'clock our Corps came up, and our picket line, once more moving forward, drove the Confederate skirmishers to within two hundred yards of their forts.
The next day a battery of twenty-pound parrot guns was planted on the hill and commenced throwing shells into the city over our heads. The enemy replied with spirit, and we received many of their compliments that were intended for the battery. Our men protected themselves by throwing up an earthwork in front of the camp, with a ditch behind it wide enough and deep enough to shelter all in case of necessity. The officers all had heavy earth barricades built in front of their tents, and these furnished fairly good protection.
I remember to have been one night in the Colonel's tent when the shells were flying pretty lively. We were just discussing whether his embankment would stop a shell, when one came along and buried itself in the ground a little in front without exploding. The Colonel went out and found that it had gone two feet into the
[131]
