140 Nortu CaroLina Troops, 1861-65.

reach us. With scarcely more than 5,000 men and eighteen
pieces of field artillery Beauregard kept in check Grant’s
army, coming up from City Point, all the day and night of
17 June, until sunrise of the 18th, when Longstreet came
over the hill at Blandford cemetery on our right. When
flanked on our right, we would fall back to meet the flank at-
tack, repulse it, and then, being massed, Beauregard would
hurl his shattered but compact battalions against the Federal
lines, and force them back, to reform and again press upon
us. Through the 17th and the succeeding night every foot
of ground from Avery’s farm to Blandford cemetery was
fought over and over again.

Ransom’s Brigade played a conspicuous part in these move-
ments. First Lieutenant Edward Phifer, of Company K,
received his death wound through the lungs in this battle. A
bright, noble boy and faithful, light-hearted soldier. At
times during this engagement our troops would be lying on .
one side of the works and those of the enemy on the other;
and it is said that the flag of the Thirty-fifth Regiment was
lost and regained a half dozen times, until the Michigan Reg-
iment with which it was engaged in a hand to hand encounter,
surrendered to it. It was desperate fighting, and the most
prolonged struggle of the kind during the war. With anx-
ious hearts we saw she night wear on, not knowing what fate
the morning would bring us, if we survived to see it; and it
was with a glad shout that, as the sun rose, and the Federals
were massing on our right flank to crush us, we welcomed
the head of Longstreet’s column coming at a trot to our right -
wing. The contemplated charge upon us was not made;
rifle pits were hastily dug and strengthened into formidable
entrenchments on the new line; and thus began the siege of
Petersburg.

From this date until 16 March, 1865, just nine months,
in the lines east of Petersburg, occupying at different times
positions from the Appomattox river to the Jerusalem plank
road, often not a hundred yards from the works of the enemy,
constantly exposed to danger and death from mortar and can-
non shells and balls, grape, shrapnel and the deadlier minie
balls, we engaged in daily battle. . Exposed to sun and storm,