354 Nortu CaroLina Troops, 1861-’65.

reaches them, spasmodic efforts here and there are made to
regain lost points along the line, from which we had dis-
lodged them; but they are repulsed in each instance. They
rush down the turnpike with their artillery nearly to our
lines, just taken from them, and open fire; but their guns are
soon in our hands, men and horses going down under the ter-
rible fire with which they are met. It was not far from this
point that the writer saw the President during this battle.
He was probably nearer Butler than he had been for four
years, as his courier whom we captured in the vicinity, said
he was then very near the general. (At the National Demo-
cratic Convention of 1860, in Charleston, 8. C., Butler gave
fifty-seven successive votes for Davis as his choice for Pres-
ident of the United States. )

And now we waited anxiously for the attacks to be made
on the right flank and rear of the enemy by General Whiting
with the two or three brigades in his hands on the Petersburg
side. Butin vain! This plan carried out with the courage
for which the General had already made a reputation among
the bravest and the best soldiers in the Army of Northern Vir-
ginia, should have resulted in the capture of all Butler’s ar-
tillery and wagons, (that he was safely withdrawing in our
sight), and a good portion of his Army of the James. Gen-
eral D. H. Hill was with General Whiting, but without com-
mand. Both his prayers and imprecations to deliver the
coup de grace were without avail. Is it an evil genius that
thus hovers above the Confederate cross? For this is not the
first time that it has been checked on the high tide to an effec-
tive victory by a voice that certainly came not out of the
North, saying: “Thus far shall thou go, and no farther.”

The only casualty remembered in the regiment as of to-day
is the mortally wounding of Green Bowers, of Company D,
by.a rifle ball which also went through an artillery horse near
him on the front line.

BUTLER BOTTLED UP.

17 May. Though we have not captured Butler, we have
“bottled him up” (as General Grant reports it to Mr. Lin-
coln), between the James and Appomattox rivers, and a