Attack on Fort Gilmer, September 29th, 1864.
By Charles Johnston.
General J. A. Early:
As the "Southern Historical Society" has lately called upon all soldiers and officers of the Confederate army for any incidents of the late war that would be of general interest, I have presumed upon the fact of having been for four years a private soldier in that army, and upon the interest that I know you take in everything connected with the cause which you so earnestly, so honestly and so bravely defended, to call your attention to some facts connected with the fight known by the troops engaged in it as the Battle of "Fort Gilmer," which was fought on the 29th day of September, 1864.
My attention was called to this subject by a letter lately published in the Norfolk Landmark, in which the writer refers to a speech made by B. F. Butler on the Civil Rights Bill. The writer in the Landmark says that what Butler says about riding over a battle-field below Richmond, and looking into the brown faces of the dead negroes, and making a vow to revenge them, is a piece of imagination on his part. He then goes into an account of the fight, but from his account it would appear that the affair was a very slight one indeed, whereas the truth was that upon that same 29th September, Richmond came nearer being captured, and that, too, by negro troops, than it ever did during the whole war, and but for the devotion and bravery of two decimated brigades, Bushrod Johnson's old Tennessee brigade and the Texas brigade, consisting of about three hundred (300) men each, the Yankees must have carried everything before them and captured Richmond.
I shall try now to give you as correct an account as I can of this fight, in which I was myself engaged, though in a very humble position—that of a private soldier. However, I saw the whole of it, and more than once during the engagement was a witness to acts of
