"The request was promptly complied with, and Benham's and Collis' brigade from City Point, and Hamlin's brigade of the Sixth Corps, were ordered to my support. The enemy continued to make heavy and desperate attempts to recapture his lost works, but without success. But, though my men stood up nobly to their work, this long and wearisome struggle was beginning to tell upon them."

At about three P.M. the enemy succeeded in regaining a few of the traverses on the left, which gave them a flank fire upon a small detached work on the left of Plank road, held by one of the regiments of Curtin's brigade, and occasioned its temporary abandonment; but, General Collis reporting to me with his brigade about this time, I at once put him in under direction of General Griffin, and the enemy was again driven from the portion of the line he had just retaken.

Between four and five o'clock P.M. General Hamlin arrived, with his brigade from the Sixth Corps, and I directed him to report to General Hartranft, by whom he was placed in support of the left of his line. These reinforcements having rendered my line secure I was disposed to make another effort to drive the enemy from his position in the rear, but the exhausted condition of my troops forced me to reluctantly abandon the idea.

"We accordingly strengthened ourselves as much as possible, whenever practicable transferring the enemy's chevaux de frise to the front of the reversed line and on the right, connecting by a cross-line the extreme point we held with our main line."

General Hartranft speaks in his report of three rebel charges to retake the works,—one at quarter past eleven A.M., one at five minutes past one P.M., and one at three P.M. These charges were delivered from the line of works in the rear of and commanding the captured line. The assault at three o'clock was in plain view from Fort Rice, and seemed to us the most formidable. Collis' brigade, consisting of the Sixty-eighth and One hundred and fourteenth Pennsylvania, the Twentieth New York State Militia, and the Sixty-first Massachusetts, was just going up to the line, when the rebels emerged from their works and came on with such steadiness and determination that a portion of our line wavered, as we could plainly see, and many men broke precipitately to the rear. Collis' line appeared to waver too, as if undetermined whether to go forward to the line or fall back. It was a critical moment. General Parke and his staff watched, with evident anxiety. All day long the boys had laid along that line under a galling fire from front and flank. A heavy mortar, planted at our right, between the enemy's first and second line, in a pit fifteen or twenty feet deep, as we afterward discovered, had kept up a fatal practice upon them in spite of all our gunners' efforts to silence it. Traverse by traverse they had driven the "Johnnies" down the line, paying for every foot of ground with their blood; and now it looked as if all might be lost. But no! Where one man quailed, a dozen stood undaunted, answering the rebel yell with Yankee cheers and bullet. We saw some of our color-bearers leap upon the works and wave the flags. It was like an inspiration. The line became firm. Collis' brigade wavered but for a moment, and then swept forward magnificently and opened fire. The gallant Connecticut Heavies, who were serving the guns in the captured works, stuck to business unflinchingly, only piling in the canister a little faster when the infantry line showed signs of weakening. There was a mighty cheer as we saw the column of gray break and surge back whence it came. We could hardly have been more exultant, indeed, had we known then that the last armed rebel we were destined to behold had disappeared forever from our view.

Although the Thirty-sixth took no active part in this engagement, as a regiment, many of the men performed laborious and dangerous service in carrying ammunition up to the captured line. Major Raymond, of General Potter's staff, Major Hodgkins, of General Hartranft's, and Captain Ames, of General Curtin's, were of course actively engaged. As a matter of general interest, a tabular statement of the losses in the corps are appended:—

Command.Killed.Wounded.Missing.Total.Aggregate.
C.O.E.M.C.O.E.M.C.O.E.M.C.O.E.M.
First Division1282220612224256280
Second Division101103756439450731781
Third Division7912543014035561594
Artillery Brigade612012627
Total18235851,21051561101,5741,682