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sessing ens EAN CTT LT

 

Firty-FirtH ReGIMent. 301
and one regiment and one battalion from Alabama, in the
assaulting columns.

The contention between Pickett’s division and Heth’s
Division, the latter commanded then by Pettigrew, has doubt-
less arisen from the following: The portion of the enemy’s
forces just in front of Pickett’s Division was behind a low
rock wall which terminated at a point opposite Pick-
ett’s left. About eighty yards to the rear of this point there
was another stone wall which commenced there and
ran along by Benner barn towards the cemetery, and the
enemy, instead of continuing his line to his right from the
termination of the first wall, and through the field,
dropped eighty yards to the second wall, and continued his
line behind that. So to have reached the enemy in Pettigrew’s
front, his troops must have marched eighty yards beyond a
continuation of their line from the point where Pickett reach-
ed the enemy in his front. Some of Pickett’s men passed over
the first line of the enemy and a few of them reached a point
some forty yards in the rear of the line and near the Federal
battery.

Some of the Fifty-fifth North Carolina Regiment reached
a point within nine yards of the rock wall in front of them.
That was seventy-three yards beyond a continuation of the
line of the first wall, and allowing two yards for the thickness
of the first wall, and adding to that the forty yards beyond the
rock wall to the point reached by some of Pickett’s men, and
running a line parallel with the first wall so as to atrike the
most advanced point reached by Pickett’s men, and continu-
ing beyond to the most advanced point reached by the men
of the Fifty-fifth Regiment, it will be found that the latter
point is thirty-one yards in advance of that line.

The Fifty-fifth Regiment was a part of the rear guard on
the retreat, and in the attack made upon them at Falling
Waters, they lost several killed and wounded. The loss of
the regiment at Gettysburg amounted to 64 killed and 172
wounded, including the few casualties at Falling Waters and
the number of captured, about 200, added to these made an
aggregate of more than one-half the number of men in the
regiment. ll of the field officers and all of the Captains