480 Nort Caroitina Troops, 1861-65.

tion to the enemy, for they have the range of all these points
and will shell you out.”

In response to the request to gather in abandoned guns,
William Hutson, from the vicinity of Shufordsville, a mem-
ber of Ray’s company, brought off the field thirty-five, more
than enough to arm his company, after its depletion by
the killed and wounded in the battle through which it had
just passed. This man Hutson was conspicuous for his cool
bravery under fire. The daring fellow succumbed, however,
to disease and died a few months later in the hospital at Tul-
lahoma.

On New Year’s day the regiment was comparatively inac-
tive. The next day, 2 January, 1863, it, together with the
balance of the division, was ordered to recross the river and at
4 o’clock in the afternoon went into that ever to be remem-
bered “Breckinridge’s Friday evening charge. Rosecrans had
massed a heavy force in a skirt of timber on the east bank of
the river, under the shadow of his “batteries of an hundred
guns,” and Bragg ordered Breckenridge with his division to
dislodge them. To do so he was forced to cross an open field
more than a quarter of a mile in width, with the enemy lying
stretched upon the ground in the edge of the woods with
deadly aim on the advancing line.

To say that the fire was terrific but mildly expresses it.
How any escaped has ever been a matter of wonder. Nothing
but a Divine Providence could carry men through such an
ordeal. About half way into the field the Sergeant-Major
of the Sixtieth, young Stanhope Erwin, from Burke county,
was killed; an early martyr in his country’s cause, a noble,
gallant boy, not out of his teens.

Here, as on Wednesday, the contest was a stubborn one,
the Federals seemingly determined at all hazards to hold their
position under the protecting care of their heavy artillery,
while the Confederates were equally as determined that they
should not, and on they surged, little recking the thinning of
their ranks, or the disadvantages that they fully recognized
they were laboring under. Harder and harder they pressed,
driving, at first it seemed, the opposing line inch by inch,
finally moving it more easily, at last to the river, into and

 

Sixtrera Recimenr. 481

across it. Soon they rallied and came forward again to find
Breckinridge’s sturdy men as immovable, by any confronting
demonstrations, as the great oaks about them.

An unexpected flank movement, however, accomplished by
crossing a force up the river and climbing a precipitous bluff,
made necessary by reason of inadequate numbers to meet
both lines, a falling back. This, while not as orderly as
might have been wished, was without panic and Patton An-
derson’s Brigade had no part in protecting Breckinridge’s
men from annihilation, as was falsely reported and strongly
intimated, at least, in General Bragg’s official report, his
troops not coming up until darkness closed the action.

This Friday’s battle has always seemed a most useless one,
and one too showing most inefficient generalship on the part
of General Bragg. Without a simultaneous move on the part
of the army on the west side of the river against the enemy’s
strongly fortified position, the attempt to do more than Breck-
Inridge did was one of the impossibilities, as any one at all
versed .in military affairs could readily have foreseen.

Saturday, following the grand work of a few men the day
before, was spent in marching and countermarching, through
an almost incessant rainstorm, the whole appearing to be
purposeless. Later in the day, or rather at night, the re-
treat of the entire army commenced ; indeed, it might be said
both armies, for there can be no doubt that the Federals had
determined to fall back and that both armies were retreating
at the same time, a case several times repeated in subsequent

battles by reason of our generals not following up their vic-
tories.

The losses of the Sixtieth in the two battles may be
summed up as follows:

In Company A, Lieutenant Weaver commanding: Ser-
geant-Major Stanhope Erwin, killed; Sergeants M. C. Toms,
D. H. Waggoner and D. W. Owen, wounded; Captain J. T.
Garison, wounded; Privates J. E. James, Robert Paris, H.
N. Bridgers, wounded, and J. L, Alexander missing.

Company B, Captain Duckett commanding: Sergeant J.

31