"At 3:30 o'clock the situation was critical in the extreme. Colonel Boyle had been killed in leading a charge and his regiment repulsed. The Twelfth Ohio Cavalry had promptly come to Boyle's support and checked the confederates, who were coming into our centre. The hospital in our rear, where our sick were, had been charged, and for a short time was in the hands of the enemy. Burbridge and Stoneman had their headquarters on a little knoll near the centre of our line, where they could see the fighting. The Confederate right, in swinging around, had covered this hill and it was no longer tenable. A lieutenant, in reporting to General Burbridge on this knoll, had been shot by a Confederate rifleman through the head and fell dead at the General's feet. Orderlies, horses and men were being shot down, and I begged General Burbridge to retire. He asked me if there were no more troops we could bring up and put into action. I told him all we had left was the Sixth United States Colored Cavalry and the horse-holders. He said:
"'Well, go and bring up the negroes and tell everybody to tie the horses as well as they can. We might as well lose them as to be whipped, when we will lose them anyway.'
"I made haste to bring up the Sixth Colored and all the horse-holders I could get. The Sixth Colored was a fine regiment, but few had faith in the fighting qualities of the negroes. General Burbridge divided them into three columns, and taking one himself gave the other two to General Wade and myself. Wade had the right, Burbridge the left and I was in the centre. Wade got off first and sailed in in gallant style. Burbridge piled his overcoat on the ground, and drawing his sword led his column forward. The men were all on foot and most of the officers. But few were mounted. It was unpleasant riding under fire where so many were on foot. Wade's horse was soon shot, but he kept on with his men, leading on foot. Looking to the left I saw Burbridge surrounded by a black crowd of men, his form towering above them and his sword pointing to the enemy. Wade was first to strike the Confederate line. They fired and fired, but the darkies kept straight on, closing for a hand-to-hand fight. Then the cry was raised along the Confederate lines that the negroes were killing the wounded. Wade went through the Confederate line like an iron wedge, and it broke and fled. Burbridge hit hard, but the insistence was less stubborn than in Wade's front. Of my own part in the action I prefer not to write. Suffice it to say that never did soldiers do better on any battle-field than the black men I led that day.
"When their guns were empty they clubbed them, and I saw one negro fighting with a gun barrel, swinging it about his head like a club, and going straight for the enemy. He did not hit anybody for nobody waited to be hit, but some of the Confederates jumped fully fifteen feet down the opposite side of that hill to get out of the way of the negroes, and I would have jumped too, probably, if I had been on their side, for I never yet saw anything in battle so terrible as an infuriated negro.
"Gillem returned just as night was putting an end to the fighting and in the approaching darkness we mistook his column for a new column of the enemy coming in on our right and rear. Burbridge hurried back with his victorious negroes and was about to advance with the Twelfth Ohio Cavalry and Eleventh Michigan, when the glad news came that the supposed Confederates were Gillem's column returning to our support.
"During the night Breckenridge retreated in the direction of the salt works, but Colonel Buckley, returning from the direction of the lead mines with his brigade, and having got in Breckenridge's rear at Seven Mile Ford, charged his advance, capturing ten prisoners. Breckenridge, no doubt thinking he had been outflanked and was about to be enclosed between two columns, abandoned all idea of going to the salt works and put back in confusion to Marion, where he took the North Carolina road and fled over the mountains. Colonel Bentley, with his Twelfth Ohio, was sent up with Breckenridge's rear. The Confederates felled trees across the road to retard Bentley's advance, but he cleared them out and he and his gallant regiment hammered Breckenridge's rear all the way into North Carolina."
The road to the Salt Works was thus opened and their destruction accomplished by the bravery and matchless valor of the gallant Sixth. Many of the regiment forfeited their lives in rescuing the force from defeat, and securing a victory; those who survived the terrible struggle no longer had opprobrious epithets hurled at them, but modestly received the just encomiums that were showered upon them by the white troops, who, amid the huzzas of victory, greeted them with loud shouts of "Comrades!"
General Brisbin, continuing, says:
"There were many instances of personal bravery, but I shall only mention one. A negro soldier had got a stump quite close to the Confederate line, and despite all efforts to dislodge him, there he stuck, picking off their men. The Confederates charged the stump, but the Federal line observing it concentrated their fire on the advancing men and drove them back. Then there were long and loud cheers for the brave darkey, who stuck to his stump and fired away with a regularity that was wonderful. His stump was riddled with bullets, but he stuck to it, although he was at times nearer the Confederate lines than our own."
