BATTLE OF KENNESAW MOUNTAIN, JUNE 27, 1864.

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The enemy appeared this morning to be moving permanently to our left, and the firing in the afternoon extended farther in that direction, Toward dark I opened fire on the enemy's batteries; also again at 11 P.M.

23d. Yesterday Gen. Cockrell had fourteen men wounded. During the night the enemy removed their tents, wagons, etc., from their abandoned encampment that was shelled yesterday, and the place looks desolate. At 10 A.M., when all was quiet on the mountain, the enemy commenced a rapid fire from guns put in position during the night, and concentrated it on our guns on the point of the mountain. Yesterday we had it all our own way; to-day they are repaying us, and the cannonade is "fast and furious." Last night there was fighting on our left, but so different are the reports received that I cannot get at the truth.

24th. There has been but little fighting during the day.

25th. The everlasting "pop," "pop" on the skirmish line is all that breaks the stillness of the morning. I went early to the left of my line, but could not ride in the rear of Hoskin's Battery on account of the trees and limbs felled by the shells. From the top of the mountain the vast panorama is ever changing. There are now large trains to the left of Lost Mountain and at Big Shanty, and the wagons are moving to and fro everywhere. Encampments of hospitals, quartermasters, commissaries, cavalry, and infantry whiten the plain here and there as far as the eye can reach. Look at our side of the long line of battle! It is narrow, poor, and quiet, save at the front where the men are, and contrasts, with here and there some spots of canvas amidst the green foliage, strangely with that of the enemy.

The usual extension is going on. Troops of the enemy are moving to the left, our left, to outflank us, and we lengthen out correspondingly; and now the blue smoke of the musket discloses the line by day trending away, far away south toward the Chattahoochee, and by night it is marked, at times, by the red glow of the artillery amidst the sparklike flashes of small arms that look in the distance like innumerable fireflies.

At 10 A.M. I opened fire on the enemy from the guns on Kennesaw. The enemy replied furiously, and for an hour the firing was incessant. I received an order to hold Ector's Brigade in reserve. In the afternoon there was considerable firing, and all the chests of one of my caissons were blown up by shell from the enemy, and by the explosion of a shell in one of the chests a gunner was killed. They have now about forty guns in front of me, and when they concentrate their fire on the mountain at any one point it is pretty severe, but, owing to our great height, nearly harmless. Thousands of their Parrott shells pass high over the mountain, and, exploding at a great elevation, the after part of the shell is arrested in its flight and, falling perpendicularly, comes down into camp, and they have injured our tents. Last night I heard a peculiar "thud" on my tent and a rattle of tin pans by the side of my cot, and this morning my negro boy cook put his head into my tent with the pans in his hands and said: "See here, master Sam, them 'fernal Yanks done shot my pans last night. What am I going to do 'bout it?" A rifle ball, coming over the mountain, had fallen from a great height and perforated the pans and penetrated deep into the earth.

26th. This is Sunday, and all is comparatively quiet on the lines up to this 4 P.M., except one artillery duel, but now cannon are heard on our extreme left.