fence, and was ordered to retire; that during that advance the enemy was driven all the while before it, till they reached their redoubt, and that, in fact, the latter never advanced a foot while this regiment remained upon the field. Any charge made by them, therefore, must have been after the Twenty-fourth had retired; and if, as Mr. Swinton says, any of those who approached nearest the fort were bayoneted, it must have been after they were dead, wounded or prisoners.
The only approach to the use of the bayonet which the writer saw or heard of on that day (and his opportunities for knowing all that occurred there were of the best), was when Private Kirkbride, of Carroll, frantic at the fall of his brother, ran down a Federal officer (a captain of the Fifth Wisconsin), and was about to plunge his bayonet into him. Hearing the earnest call of the officer for quarter, across the field above the din of battle, and seeing that there was no time to spare if the man was to be saved, the writer galloped to where he was, shouting to Kirkbride to hold. The officer begging to surrender, tendered his sword, and unbuckling the belt, with scabbard and pistol, asked that he might be put under guard forthwith; but was told that there was no time to tarry for his pistol, and no men to spare for his guard, and he had better get to the rear; and Kirkbride and his companion hastened on. This occurred but a short time before the fence was reached and the order was given to retire, so that the Federal soon after found himself with his friends again, some of whom (General Hancock himself among them, it is believed) sent the writer soon after, by exchanged prisoners, hearty acknowledgments and thanks for saving their comrade's life.
General McClellan, with his usual exaggeration when counting Confederate soldiers, reported that Hancock had captured two Colonels, two Lieutenant-Colonels, and killed as many more. As a matter of fact, he captured none, and the only field-officer killed was the heroic Budham, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fifth North Carolina, a very impersonation of courage itself. They claimed to have killed the writer also; but in this, as in many other statements, they were greatly in error.
Late Colonel Twenty-Fourth Virginia Infantry.
