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SEVENTEENTH REGIMENT.

The Federals being checked on the South of the “Crater” charged Company A, the extreme right Company, next to the “Crater.”  Captain W.H.  Edwards was absent sick, and a few of the men were covered with dirt by the explosion and were consequently demoralized.  Private Hoke was ordered to surrender—­declared he never would surrender to a Yankee.  He clubbed his musket and knocked down four of his assailants, and was bayoneted.  There were five men killed in Company A. Company F was the next attacked, and private John Caldwell shot one man and brained two with the butt of his musket.  Lieutenant Samuel Lowry, a fine young man of twenty years, and four privates were killed.  Company D surrendered in a traverse, and twenty-seven men were killed.  Had the splendid Lieutenant W.G.  Stevenson been present the result would have been different.  Fourteen out of twenty-seven of these men died in prison of scurvy at Elmira, N.Y.  Private J.S.  Hogan, of Company D, leaped the traverse.  He joined in Mahone’s charge, and after the fight was sickened by the carnage; went to the spring to revive himself, then went into the charge under General Sanders.  After the battle he procured enough coffee and sugar to last him a month.  This young rebel seemed to have a furor for fighting and robbing Yankees.  At the battle of Fort Steadman he manned a cannon which was turned on the enemy, and in the retreat from Petersburg he was in every battle.  He was always on the picket line, by choice, where he could kill, wound or capture the enemy.  He feasted well while the other soldiers fed on parched corn, and surrendered at Appomattox with his haversack filled with provisions.

Company C, the next Company, had fourteen men killed.  Its Captain, William Dunovant, was only eighteen years of age, and as fine a Captain as was in Lee’s Army. lieutenant C. Pratt, a fine officer not more than twenty-five years old, was killed.  The command devolved on Sergeant T.J.  LaMotte.  G and H had two each; I, three; K, five; and B, one; F, five.

The Federals had the advantage over the Seventeenth because there were some elevated points near the “Crater” they could shoot from.  After being driven down about fifty yards there was an angle in the ditch, and Sergeant LaMotte built a barricade, which stopped the advance.  A good part of the fighting was done by two men on each side at a time—­the rest being cut off from view.

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LOOKING AFTER SMITH’S MEN.