Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 4.djvu/138

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120
CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY.


wounded. On the Confederate side, General Starke and Colonel Douglass, commanding Lawton s brigade, had been killed; Generals Lawton, D. R. Jones and Ripley wounded. A third of the men of Lawton s, Hays and Trimble’s brigades were reported killed or wounded. Of Colquitt’s field officers, 4 were killed, 5 wounded, and the remaining one struck slightly. All of Jackson s and D. H. Hill’s troops engaged suffered proportionately.[1]

As Mansfield s men of the Twelfth corps deployed, Hooker’s corps, worn from its struggle with Jackson, withdrew up the Hagerstown pike. General Long-street says: "Walker, Hood and D. H. Hill attacked against the Twelfth corps; worn by its fight against Jackson, it was driven back as far as the post and rail fence on the east open, where they were checked. They (the Confederates) were outside of the line, their left in the air, and exposed to the fire of a 3o-gun battery posted at long range on the Hagerstown ridge by General Doubleday. Their left was withdrawn and the line rectified, when Greene s brigade of the Twelfth resumed position in the northeast angle of the wood, which it held until Sedgwick’s division came in bold march."

The Sixth Regiment History says of the part of that command: "The enemy s guns in our front poured shot and shell in us while we were exposed to a cross-fire from his long-range guns, posted on the northeast side of Antietam creek. . . . Our line was called into action, and moved to the front on the Snaketown road, and between it and the Hagerstown pike. The front line had made a noble stand, but they were being pressed back. The enemy with fresh lines was pushing forward when we met them. Here it was that, for the first time in the war, I saw men fix their bayonets in action, which they did at the command of General Hood, who was riding up and down the line. We broke their line and held our place for awhile,

  1. Manassas to Appomattox, p. 243.