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of Ransom's North Carolina Brigade, which occupied the lines next to Elliott's Brigade on the north of the crater; talk with Major David N. Walker, of your city, who commanded a battery on the south of the crater; talk with Captain W. Gordon McCabe, who as Adjutant of Pegram's Battalion of Light Artillery, posted immediately west of the crater, witnessed the charge of the Virginia Brigade; talk with Dr. Joseph W. Eggleston, of your city, who, as a member of Lamkin's Mortar Battery, fired many a shell into the Federal lines during the engagement; talk with many others of the* surviving participants in the battle, and they will satisfy you that, so far from the success of the Confederate arms at the crater being the work of the Virginia Brigade alone, strictly speaking, it was not the sole work of the three brigades commanded by General Mahone, but the result of fighting wherein other infantry took part and the artillery was a potential factor.
But to what officer in particular does especial credit for this success belong? To General Weisiger, says The Times. These are not the words, but the substance of its editorial of February 26, 1899.
If General Weisiger, and not General Mahone, was entitled to the credit of recapturing the Confederates' works as claimed by T/if Times, it is manifest that both General A. P. Hill, to whose corps the division commanded by General Mahone belonged, and General R. E. Lee were laboring under a mistake, when, on the day of the battle, in their official reports, they referred to the retaking of the salient as the work of Mahone, the report of General Lee to the Secretary of War, published on page 818 of serial 82 of the War Records, being as follows:
"HEADQUARTERS NEAR PETERSBURG,
"July 30, 1864, 6:30 P. M.
11 Hon. James A. Seddon, Secretary of War:
"General A. P. Hill reports that General Mahone, in retaking the salient possessed by the enemy this morning, recovered the four guns with which it was armed, captured 12 stand of colors, seventy- four officers, including Brigadier-General Bartlett and staff, and 855 enlisted men. Upward of 500 of the enemy's dead are lying un- buried in the trenches. His loss slight.
"R. E. LEE."
