A little after eleven o'clock P.M., November 28th, we were called to our places in the trenches by heavy musketry to the right. It was a cloudy, dark night, and at a distance of only a few feet it was impossible to distinguish any object. The firing soon ceased, with the exception of an occasional shot on the picket line. An attack had evidently been made on our rifle-pits; but at what precise point, or with what success, was as yet unknown. Reports soon came in. The enemy had first driven in the pickets in front of Fort Sanders, and had then attacked our line, which was also obliged to fall back. The rebels in front of the Thirty-sixth, however, did not advance beyond the pits which our men had just vacated, and a new line was at once established by Captain Buffum, of Company D, our brigade officer of the day. We afterwards learned that the enemy had advanced along the whole line and established themselves as near as possible to our works.
It was now evident that the enemy intended an attack; but where would it be made? All that long, cold night—our men were without overcoats—we stood in the trenches pondering that question. Might not this demonstration in our front be only a feint to draw our attention from other parts of the line, where the chief blow was to be struck? So some thought. Gradually the night wore away.
A little after six o'clock the next morning the enemy suddenly opened a furious cannonade. This was mostly directed against Fort Sanders; but several shells struck the Powell House, in rear of Battery Noble. Roemer immediately responded from College Hill. In about twenty minutes the enemy's fire slackened, and in its stead rose the well-known rebel yell in the direction of the fort. Then followed the rattle of musketry, the roar of cannon, and the bursting of shells. The yells died away, and then rose again. Now the roar of musketry and artillery was redoubled. It was a moment of the deepest anxiety. Our straining eyes were fixed on the fort. The rebels had reached the ditch, and were now endeavoring to scale the parapet. Whose will be the victory,—oh, whose? The yells again died away, and then followed three loud Union cheers,—"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" How those cheers thrilled our hearts, as we stood almost breathless at our posts in the trenches! They told us that the enemy had been repulsed, and that the victory was ours. Peering through the rising fog toward the fort, not a hundred yards away,—oh, glorious sight!—we dimly saw that our flag was still there.
Let us now go back a little. Longstreet had learned of the defeat of Bragg, and, in opposition to the advice of his generals, determined to make an assault on General Burnside's lines. "Our only safety," he said to them, "is in making the assault on the enemy's position." Port Sanders was made the point of attack, as it was evidently the key of the defences. Accordingly, having seized our rifle-pits, Longstreet, under the cover of the ridge on which Fort Sanders was built, formed his columns for the assault. The men were picked men,—the flower of his corps. "The force which was to attempt an enterprise which ranks with the most famous charges in military history," says Pollard, in his "Third Year of the War," pages 161, 162, "should be mentioned in detail. It consisted of three brigades of McLaws' division: that of General Wolford, the Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-fourth Georgia Regiments, and Cobb's and Phillip's Georgia Legions; that of General Humphrey, the Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third Mississippi Regiments; and a brigade composed of General Anderson's and Bryant's brigades, embracing, among others, the Palmetto State Guard, the Fifteenth South Carolina Regiment, and the Fifty-first, Fifty-third, and Fifty-ninth Georgia Regiments." One brigade was to make the assault, two brigades were to support it, and two brigades were to watch our lines and keep up a constant fire. Five regiments formed the brigade selected for the assaulting column. These were placed in position "in column by division, closed in mass." When the fire of their artillery slackened, the order for the charge was given. The salient of the north-west bastion was the point of attack. The rebel lines were much broken in passing the abatis. But the wire entanglements proved a greater obstacle. Whole companies were prostrated. Benjamin now opened his triple-shotted guns. Nevertheless, the weight of their column carried the rebels forward, and in two minutes from the time the charge was commenced they had reached the ditch around the fort, and were endeavoring to scale the parapet. The guns, which had been trained to sweep the ditch, now opened a most destructive fire. Lieutenant Benjamin also took shells in his hand, and, lighting the fuse, tossed them over the parapet into the crowded ditch. "It stilled them down," he said. One of the rebel brigades in reserve, with added yells, now came up in support, and the slaughter was renewed. The ditch was filled, and several rebel flags were planted on the parapet. But the Highlanders and the Twenty-ninth Massachusetts Volunteers in the fort swept off with their muskets those who attempted to scale the parapet. The men in the ditch, satisfied of the hopelessness of the task they had undertaken, now surrendered. They represented eleven regiments, and numbered nearly three hundred. Among them were seventeen commissioned officers. Over two hundred dead and wounded, including three colonels, lay in the ditch alone. The body of General Humphrey was found near the ditch, while the ground in front of the fort was strewn with the bodies of the dead and wounded. Over one thousand stands of arms fell into our hands, and the battle-flags of the Thirteenth and Seventeenth Mississippi and Sixteenth Georgia. Our loss was eight men killed and five wounded.[6] Never was a victory more complete, and achieved at so slight a cost. Never, too, were brighter laurels won than were laid that morning on the brow of the hero of Fort Sanders, Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery.[7]
[6] Longstreet gives his total loss from November 14th to December 4th as 198 officers and men killed, 850 wounded, 248 missing; total 1,296. His loss in the assault on Fort Sanders, November 29th, he gives as 129 killed, 448 wounded, and 226 missing; total, 803.
[7] The following account of this assault is taken from a history of the Sixtieth Alabama Regiment, published at Montgomery, Ala., in 1867:—
"At about three or four o'clock in the morning the regiment was gotten under arms. The atmosphere was damp and penetratingly cold; the men were thinly clad, and numbers of them barefoot. Their sufferings while standing under arms, clasping with numbed hands the cold barrels of their muskets, can be appreciated by those alone who have experienced similar hardships. But, despite of cold, hunger, nakedness, and approaching peril, the brave fellows were full of spirit, and stout hearts beat hopefully beneath each ragged gray jacket. General Gracie, while riding through his brigade on the day before, had pointed significantly towards Knoxville, and remarked, 'There are shoes over there, boys,' and visions of comfortable brogans were floating through the minds of those barefoot Confederates.
"There was no noise, save the low hum of subdued voices, the rumbling of moving artillery, and the steady tramp of different bodies of troops advancing to their allotted positions. The night was dark; but the enemy, anticipating our movement, filled the heavens with streams of artificial light, which threw the shadow of our columns far to the rear, and was reflected back by many an unsheathed sword and burnished barrel.
"At length, the ominous silence was broken by the discharge of a single piece of artillery from the brow of a hill to our right. Artillery had been planted on each of the hill-tops in the vicinity,—some being occupied by the enemy, and some by ourselves,—and now, in a few moments after the discharge of this pioneer piece, a brisk fire was opened from them all. Thunder peals burst forth and answered each other in quick succession; and, like destroying angels, the huge missiles flew through the dense atmosphere with an unearthly shrieking. Under the exhilaration of this stirring martial serenade, and the animating words of the colonel of the regiment (who seemed everywhere present), the line was put in motion, and, encountering a creek, plunged through, regardless of the cold.
"After ascending a hill, and advancing a few hundred yards in the open field beyond, the command was suddenly ordered to fall back, and accordingly faced about and moved in retreat to the brow of the hill just passed, where it occupied a line of rifle-pits located at that point. This retrograde movement, suggestive of ill, and at first inexplicable, was soon accounted for in a manner that filled every heart with sorrow, and shrouded every countenance in gloom. We had been in the rifle-pits but a short time when day began to dawn. The firing ceased for the most part; only a stray shell now and then ricocheted through our line, or burst above our heads. While thus waiting in the rifle-pits, expecting, with much solicitude, the denouement, a solitary litter was seen advancing toward us over the field in our front; then another and another, and anon a sad procession was silently threading its way to the rear. No words were required to convey the sad tidings. The blood dripping from the litters, and the occasional groans of their mangled occupants, who had led in the charge, as they passed through our line on their way to the rear, apprised us, more unmistakably than language could have done, of the woful fact of the morning's disaster. The charge, though gallant, was unsuccessful, and five hundred noble Mississippians lay dead or dying in the moat that surrounded the fort upon which the attack had been made. A truce had been early secured, and all day long the sad procession moved on, silently and mournfully, in the discharge of its duty.