The three Confederate lines of attack had soon, as on yesternight, become one, as each pushed forward to sustain the other.  The enemy “pressed forward in crowds rather than in any regular formation” (Sickles); but the momentum of these splendid troops was well-nigh irresistible.  Nichols’s brigade of Trimble’s division, and Iverson’s and Rodes’s of Rodes’s division, pressed forward to sustain the first line on the north of the road, and repel the flank attack, constantly renewed by Berry.  Another advance of the entire line was ordered.  Rodes led his old brigade in person.  The Confederates seemed determined, for Jackson’s sake, to carry and hold the works which they had twice gained, and out of which they had been twice driven; for, with “Old Jack” at their head, they had never shown a sterner front.

Now came the most grievous loss of this morning’s conflict.  Gallant Berry, the life of his division, always in the hottest of the fire, reckless of safety, had fallen mortally wounded, before Ward’s brigade could reach his line.  Gen. Revere assumed command, and, almost before the renewal of the Confederate attack, “heedless of their murmurs,” says Sickles’s report, “shamefully led to the rear the whole of the Second Brigade, and portions of two others, thus subjecting these proud soldiers, for the first time, to the humiliation of being marched to the rear while their comrades were under fire.  Gen. Revere was promptly recalled with his troops, and at once relieved of command.”  Revere certainly gives no satisfactory explanation of his conduct; but he appears to have marched over to the vicinity of French of the Second Corps, upon the White House clearing, and reported to him with a large portion of his troops.  Revere was subsequently courtmartialled for this misbehavior, and was sentenced to dismissal; but the sentence was revoked by the President, and he was allowed to resign.

Col.  Stevens was speedily put in command in Revere’s stead; but he, too, soon fell, leaving the gallant division without a leader, nearly half of its number off the field, and the remainder decimated by the bloody contest of the past four hours.  Moreover, Gen. Hays, whose brigade of French’s division had been detached in support of Berry, where it had done most gallant work, was at the same time wounded and captured by the enemy.

It was near eight o’clock.  The artillery was quite out of ammunition, except canister, which could not be used with safety over the heads of our troops.  Our outer lines of breastworks had been captured, and were held by the enemy.  So much as was left of Berry’s division was in absolute need of re-forming.  Its supports were in equally bad plight.  The death of Berry, and the present location of our lines in the low ground back of the crest just lost, where the undergrowth was so tangled and the bottom so marshy, that Ward, when he marched to Berry’s relief, had failed to find him, obliged the Federals to fall back to the Fairview heights, and form a new line at the western edge of the Chancellor clearing, where the artillery had been so ably sustaining the struggle now steadily in progress since daylight.  Sickles himself supervised the withdrawal of the line, and its being deployed on its new position.