of the cannon that Longstreet had brought forward, echoed and re-echoed up and down the little valley, but never to die away, for new troops were being put rapidly in action to the right and left of us.  Men rolled and writhed in their last death struggle; wounded men groped their way to the rear, being blinded by the stifling smoke.  All commands were drowned in this terrible din of battle—­the earth and elements shook and trembled with the deadly shock of combat.  Regiments were left without commanders; companies, without officers.  The gallant Colonel Gaillard, of the Second, had fallen.  The intrepid young Colonel of the Third, J.D.  Nance, had already died in the lead of his regiment.  The commander of the Seventh, Captain Goggans, was wounded.  Colonel John D. Kennedy, commanding the brigade, had left the field, disabled from further service for the day.

Still the battle rolled on.  It seemed for a time as if the whole Federal Army was upon us—­so thick and fast came the death-dealing missiles.  Our ranks were being decimated by the wounded and the dead, the little valley in the Wilderness becoming a veritable “Valley of Hennom.”  The enemy held their position with a tenacity, born of desperation, while the confederates pressed them with that old-time Southern vigor and valor that no amount of courage could withstand.  Both armies stood at extreme tension, and the cord must soon snap one way or the other, or it seemed as all would be annihilated, Longstreet seeing the desperate struggle in which Kershaw and Humphreys, on the right, and Hood’s old Texans, on the left, were now engaged, sought to relieve the pressure by a flank movement with such troops as he had at his disposal.  R.H.  Andersen’s Division, of Hill’s Corps had reported to him during the time Kershaw was in such deadly throes of battle.  Four brigades, Wofford’s, of Kershaw’s, and G.T.  Anderson’s, Mahone’s, and Davis’, of Anderson’s Division, were ordered around on our right, to strike the left of Hancock But during this manoeuver the enemy gradually withdrew from our front, and Kershaw’s Brigade was relieved by Bratton’s South Carolina Brigade.  I quote here from Colonel Wallace, of the Second.

“Kershaw’s Division formed line in the midst of this confusion, like cool and well-trained veterans as they were, checked the enemy, and soon drove them back.  The Second Regiment was on the left of the plank road, near a battery of artillery, and although completely flanked at one time by the giving away of the troops on the right, gallantly stood their ground, though suffering terribly; they and the battery, keeping up a well-directed fire, to the right oblique, until the enemy gave way.  General Lee now appeared on our left, leading Hood’s Texas Brigade.  We joined our brigade on the right of the plank road, and again advanced to the attack.