Union Artillery
Porter posted his batteries intermittently along this ridge. Most of his guns were twelve-pounder Napoleons like the two here.
“The woods were full of smoke,” wrote a Massachusetts artillerist, “and thicker and thicker buzzed the bullets.” Soon the Confederate infantry appeared. One of the Federal guns fired a double charge of canister at 35 yards range, which “mowed their ranks awfully,”
It was a last salute. Thousands of gray-clad infantry swarmed up the hill and by nightfall had captured nearly two dozen of Porter’s cannon.
“By the time we had gotten across [Boatswain’s Creek], the front line, broken by our fire, frightened by our screams which sounded like forty thousand wild cats, had … crowded to the top of the hill, thus preventing their artillery from firing into us … We ran over their artillery, killing the gunners at their guns … We paid dearly for this occasion, but they paid still more dearly, for their dead and dying lay so thick as almost to block our pursuit.”
Edmund D. Patterson, 9th Alabama Infantry
Marker is on Watt House Road (Virginia Route 718), on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
