beyond the stream.  This was only passable at few places, but Hill pushed his men over under a galling fire of musketry, while the enemy swept the plain and valley below with shell and grape from their batteries crowning the height beyond.  A.P.  Hill formed his lines beyond the stream, and advanced with a steady step and a bold front to the assault.  Charge after charge was made, only to be met and repulsed with a courage equal to that of the Confederates.  Hill did not know then that he was fighting the bulk of the Fifth Corps, for he heard the constant roll of Jackson and D.H.  Hill’s guns away to his left; Jackson thinking the Light Division under A.P.  Hill would drive the enemy from his position, withdrew from Cold Harbor and sought to intercept the retreating foe in concealing his men for some hours on the line of retreat.  But as the day wore on, and no diminution of the firing, at the point where A.P.  Hill and his adversary had so long kept up, Jackson and D.H.  Hill undertook to relieve him.  Longstreet, too, near nightfall, who had been held in reserve all day, now broke from his place of inaction and rushed into the fray like an uncaged lion, and placed himself between A.P.  Hill and the river.  For a few moments the earth trembled with the tread of struggling thousands, and the dreadful recoil of the heavy batteries that lined the crest of the hill from right to left.  The air was filled with the shrieking shells as they sizzled through the air or plowed their way through the ranks of the battling masses.  Charges were met by charges, and the terrible “Rebel Yell” could be heard above the din and roar of battle, as the Confederates swept over field or through the forest, either to capture a battery or to force a line of infantry back by the point of the bayonet.  While the battle was yet trembling in the balance, the Confederates making frantic efforts to pierce the enemy’s lines, and they, with equal courage and persistency, determined on holding, Pickett and Anderson, of Longstreet’s Division, and Hood and Whiting, of Jackson’s, threw their strength and weight to the aid of Hill’s depleted ranks.  The enemy could stand no longer.  The line is broken at one point, then another, and as the Confederates closed in on them from all sides, they break in disorder and leave the field.  It looked at one time as if there would be a rout, but Porter in this emergency, put in practice one of Napoleon’s favorite tactics.  He called up his cavalry, and threatened the weakened ranks of the Confederates with a formidable front of his best troopers.  These could not be of service in the weight of battle, but protected the broken columns and fleeing fugitives of Porter’s Army.

South Carolina will be ever proud of the men whom she had on that memorable field who consecrated the earth at Gaines’ Mill with their blood, as well as of such leaders as Gregg, McGowan, McCrady, Marshall, Simpson, Haskell, and Hamilton, and hosts of others, who have ever shed lustre and glory equal to those of any of the thousands who have made the Palmetto State renowned the world over.