Lee massed heavily from his left flank on the broken point of his line.  Five times during the day he assaulted furiously, but without dislodging our troops from their new position.  His losses must have been fearful.  Sometimes the belligerents would be separated by but a few feet.  In one place a tree, eighteen inches in diameter, was cut entirely down by musket balls.  All the trees between the lines were very much cut to pieces by artillery and musketry.  It was three o’clock next morning before the fighting ceased.  Some of our troops had then been twenty hours under fire.  In this engagement we did not lose a single organization, not even a company.  The enemy lost one division with its commander, one brigade and one regiment, with heavy losses elsewhere.(30) Our losses were heavy, but, as stated, no whole company was captured.  At night Lee took a position in rear of his former one, and by the following morning he was strongly intrenched in it.

Warren’s corps was now temporarily broken up, Cutler’s division sent to Wright, and Griffin’s to Hancock.  Meade ordered his chief of staff, General Humphreys, to remain with Warren and the remaining division, and authorized him to give it orders in his name.

During the day I was passing along the line from wing to wing continuously.  About the centre stood a house which proved to be occupied by an old lady and her daughter.  She showed such unmistakable signs of being strongly Union that I stopped.  She said she had not seen a Union flag for so long a time that it did her heart good to look upon it again.  She said her husband and son, being, Union men, had had to leave early in the war, and were now somewhere in the Union army, if alive.  She was without food or nearly so, so I ordered rations issued to her, and promised to find out if I could where the husband and son were.

There was no fighting on the 13th, further than a little skirmishing between Mott’s division and the enemy.  I was afraid that Lee might be moving out, and I did not want him to go without my knowing it.  The indications were that he was moving, but it was found that he was only taking his new position back from the salient that had been captured.  Our dead were buried this day.  Mott’s division was reduced to a brigade, and assigned to Birney’s division.

During this day I wrote to Washington recommending Sherman and Meade (31) for promotion to the grade of Major-General in the regular army; Hancock for Brigadier-General; Wright, Gibbon and Humphreys to be Major-Generals of Volunteers; and Upton and Carroll to be Brigadiers.  Upton had already been named as such, but the appointment had to be confirmed by the Senate on the nomination of the President.