Existing comment:
Intensity of Battle
"By the time we had gotten across, the front line, broken by our fire, frightened … which sounded like forty thousand wild cats, had reached their second line, … confusion, and they, panicstricken, left their works and croded to the top of the hill, thus preventing their artillery from firing into us…."
-- Edmund D. Patterson, 9th Alabama Infantry
New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan troops commanded by Brig. Gen. Daniel Butterfield defended this sector of Porter's line. During the early afternoon the greatest threat to these men was the falling limbs severed by the hundreds of artillery shells that screeched overhead.
Late in the evening Confederate infantry appeared at the opposite crest of the hill. Butterfield's men met them with a blaze of musketry fire that staggered the front ranks and wounded Brig. Gen. George E. Pickett. The Southern pause was only momentary. Soon the advancing Confederates nearly wrapped around Butterfield's position. His thinking now changed from defense to survival. For his determined efforts to rally the retreating Union soldiers, General Butterfield was awarded the Medal of Honor. In a few days he would arrange the haunting music of "Taps."
Private Banbury Jones of the 11th Alabama seized this flag after the original color bearer was struck by 13 bullets. Soon Jones was hit in the right arm, shot through both legs, and then a bullet tore into his left arm. The flag dropped and was given to a third man despite Jones' plea to tie the flagstaff to his body, as he was still able to walk. |