About 6:30 I went down a narrow ditch to see if Smith and his men were properly located to keep the enemy from going down to the ravine before I got back.  I saw there was a vacant space in our trench.  I hustled in and saw two muskets poked around an angle, as I got in the muskets were fired and harmlessly imbedded the balls in the breastworks.  I immediately concluded that it was not very safe for the commander being on the extreme right of his men and went lower down.  In a short time I again went in a ditch a little lower down the hill, anxious about the weak point on our line.  I was smoking a pipe with a long tie-tie stem.  As I returned I observed a rush down the line.  As I got in the ditch the bowl of the pipe was knocked off.  A big brawny fellow cried out, “Hold on men! the Colonel can’t fight without his pipe!” He wheeled around, stopped the men until he picked up the bowl and restored it to me.  I wish I knew the name of this kind-hearted old soldier.

The principal fighting was done by the head of the column.  A few game fellows attempted to cross the breastworks.  A Captain Sims and a negro officer were bayoneted close together on our breastworks, but hundreds of the enemy for hours stuck like glue to our outer bank.

* * * * *

A LONG AND LAZY FIGHT.

The sun was oppressively hot.  There was very little musketry, the cannonading had closed; it was after 7 o’clock, and the soldiers on both sides, as there was not much shooting going on, seemed to resort to devices to pass the time.  I saw Captain Steele throwing bayonets over a traverse.  I saw Lamotte on one knee on the ground, and asked what he was doing.  He whispered, “I’m trying to get the drop on a fellow on the other side.”  They would throw clods of clay at each other over the bank.  As an Irishman threw over a lump of clay I heard him say, “Tak thart, Johnny.”  We all wished that Beauregard had supplied us with hand grenades, for the battle had simmered down to a little row in the trenches.

* * * * *

THE BATTLE THAT CONQUERED MEADE.

At 8.10 A.M.  Ferrero’s four thousand three hundred negroes rushed over and reached the right flank of the Seventeenth.  This horde of barbarians added greatly to the thousands of white men that packed themselves to the safe side of the breastworks.  Thousands rushed down the hill side.  Ransom’s Twenty-sixth and Twenty-fifth Regiments were crazy to get hold of the negroes.  “Niggers” had been scarce around there during the morning, now they were packed in an acre of ground and in close range.  The firing was great all down the hill side, but when it got down to the branch the musketry was terrific, and Wright’s Battery two hundred yards off poured in its shells.  About half past 8 o’clock, at the height of the battle, there was a landslide amongst the negroes.  Colonel Carr says two thousand negroes rushed back and lifted him from his feet and swept him to the rear.  General Delavan Bates, who was shot through the face, said at that time that Ransom’s Brigade was reported to occupy those lines.