Assaulting the Confederate Battle Line
"The men pressed forward, holding their fire with wonderful self control till they were in plain site of the enemy almost face to face."
As the Federal troops realigned themselves after the creek crossing, and because of the shorter distance General Frank Wheaton’s 1st Division had to cover in doing so, they would be the first to make contact with General Richard S. Ewell’s entrenched Confederate forces along the ridge above you. As the Union soldiers neared their opponents, they were told not to “open fire until within two hundred yards or less of the enemy.”
When Wheaton’s men were within 100 yards, the nearing Federals began “showing handkerchiefs as an invitation to the men to surrender.” To this a Confederate officer responded by calling out, “Ready!...the men rose, all together, like a piece of mechanism, kneeling on their right knees and their faces set with an expression that meant everything Aim!’ The musket barrels fell to an almost perfect horizontal line leveled about the knees of the advancing line. “Fire!”
The first Confederate volley “swallowed up” the advance Federal line, with the second line wavering and finally breaking by the repeating volleys” Two Union regiments, the 2nd Rhode Island and 49th Pennsylvania, were involved in this retreat to the creek.
Marker can be reached from Saylers Creek Road (Virginia Route 617) 0.6 miles north of Scuffletown Road (Virginia Route 620), on the right when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
