Saturday, September 14, 2013

From New York

NEW YORK, May 9.

Gen. Marcy telegraphs the following:


WILLIAMSBURG, May 8.

Gen. McClellan, on the 6th inst., had a most decisive victory.  Only about 30,000 of our troops were engaged against 50,000 of the best rebel troops.  Our men fought most valiantly, and used  the bayonet freely which the rebels couldn’t stand.  They fought well until they felt the cold steel, when they took to their heels and ran like hounds, leaving their dead, wounded and sick upon our hands.  Joe Johnson [sic] lead them in person.  They have lost several of their best officers.

The Herald’s correspondence gives the following graphic account of the magnificent charge of Hancock’s brigade on the rebels:  “Scarcely a hundred yards were between the rebels and the guns, when our skirmish fire became silent.  The lines of the 5th Wisconsin and the 3d New York formed up in close order to the right of the battery; the long range of musket barrels came to one level, and one terrible volley tore through the rebel line; moment more, and the same long range of muskets came to another level, and the order to charge with the bayonet was given, and away went the two regiments with one glad cheer.  Gallant as our foes were, they could not meet that.  But few brigades mentioned in history would have done better than this did.  For a space which was generally estimated at three quarters of a mile they advanced under fire of a splendidly served battery, and with a cloud of skirmishers stretched across their front, whose fire was very destructive, and if after that the rebels had not the nerve to meet a line of bayonets that came towards them like the spirit of destruction, it need not be wondered at when they broke and fled in complete panic.  145 were taken prisoners, and nearly 500 were killed and wounded.”

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, May 10, 1862, p. 2

No comments: