After retiring from the advanced position on the Plank road, you placed the Twelfth Mississippi regiment and the Sixteenth Mississippi regiment in Battery Gregg, and the Nineteenth and Forty-eighth regiments in Battery Whitworth.
There was no other organized command in Battery Gregg save the two regiments mentioned, and a section of artillery. There may have been good and true men from other commands who aided in the defence, but they were without organization. Lieutenant-Colonel James H. Duncan, of the Nineteenth regiment, was in command of the two regiments of your brigade in Battery Gregg.
The assertion that "Harris's brigade should not be mentioned in connection with the defence of Battery Gregg," under the facts, I consider unwarranted and unjust, coming as it does, from fellow comrades of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Yours truly,
Captain Twelfth Mississippi regiment.
General N. H. Harris, Vicksburg, Mississippi.
FROM GENERAL WILLIAM MAHONE.
General N. H. Harris,
Vicksburg, Mississippi.
My dear General,—I am proud of your kind words in respect to me personally, and in response to the enquiry made in your letter of the 17th instant, hasten this reply.
Before I proceed, however needless as it may be, I cannot forbear to say that the brigade you commanded, deservedly stood abreast in my opinion with any other of my knowledge for its efficiency, devotion to the cause and its fidelity to duty—as it stood even with any other for conspicuous gallantry.
I do know that when General Lee telegraphed me on the night of second of April in effect, "Can you spare me a brigade of your division," my answer was, "Harris's Mississippi brigade is under orders on its way to you," for I had already, on the receipt of his dispatch, before making that reply, put your brigade under orders to report to General Lee at Petersburg.
My information was, in that trying time, immediately following the retreat of General Lee's army, that your brigade had done noble work at Petersburg, and that a part of it, perhaps under the immediate command of Colonel James, had gone down in a persistent and glorious defence of Battery Gregg.
The impression then made I have had, time and again, confirmed by officers, whose commands were connected directly with the attack upon and fall of that battery, and I had not supposed there was a dispute as to the fact that such part of your brigade, mainly in conjunction with the artillerymen who had been gathered by General R. Lindsay Wal-
