Gen. Thomas: McPherson's column marched near the top of the hill, through very tangled brush, but was repulsed. It is found impossible to deploy, but they hold their ground. I wish you to study well the positions, and if possible to break through the lines to do it. It is easier now than it will be hereafter. I hear Leggitt's guns well behind the mountain.
W. T. Sherman, Major General Commanding.
As nothing decisive was obtained by Sherman's attack, the fire slackened, except on the skirmish line. After dark the enemy withdrew to their main trenches, the roar of guns died gradually away, and the morning of the 28th dawned on both armies in their former positions. The battle of Kennesaw, then, was a display of force and an attack on the entire length of our line by artillery and infantry, under cover of which two grand attacks were made by assaulting columns, the one on my line and the other on Cheatham's.
28th. After the battle of yesterday there is less activity in front, and the enemy move about in a subdued manner and less lordly style, and yet they resent defeat by a cannonade this afternoon.
29th. Everything is quiet this morning, and so continued till 5:30 P.M., when they opened on our guns on Kennesaw with a new battery to aid the previous ones. Perhaps they design attacking my line again. A great number of shells fell in camp, or rather they were fragments of shells bursting high over the mountain. At dusk cannonading burst out again.
30th. Rather quiet this morning. At 2:30 A.M. last night we were all aroused by a severe rattle of musketry on the left. We got up and saddled our horses, but after about twenty minutes the firing ceased and all was quiet till morning. It appears that this night attack was caused by a false alarm. This morning I rode to Marietta, it being the first time I have left my line. This afternoon I went to the batteries on the mountain with Gen. Mackell, and then again with Gen. Stevens. There has been but little firing to-day.
July 1. After lying down last night I was aroused by some shells passing overhead, and then again by some sharp musketry on my left. The awful lies found in the newspapers, manufactured by correspondents, lauding certain generals and magnifying their victories, should ruin them.
This afternoon the enemy turned fifty-two pieces of artillery on the three guns I have on the west brow of Little Kennesaw, and continued the fire until long after dark. Seldom in war have there been instances where so many guns have been trained on a single spot. But it was only in the darkness of the night that the magnificence of the scene was displayed—grand beyond imagination, beautiful beyond description. Kennesaw, usually invisible from a distance at night, now resembles Vesuvius in the beginning of an eruption. The innumerable curling rings of smoke from the incessant bursting of shells over the mountain top, added to the volumes belching forth from our guns, wreathed Kennesaw in a golden thunder-cloud in the still sky, from which came incessant flashes of iridescent light from shells, like bursting stars. The canopy of clouds rolling around the peak looked softer than the downy cotton, but ever changing in color. One moment they were as crimson as the evening clouds painted by the rays of the summer setting sun, and the next, brighter than if lit by the lightning's flash, or bursting meteors. However brilliant and varied and beautiful to the sight, it was not one of pure delight, because it was not a grand display in the clouds for amusement, and when it died away, when silence came, and night threw her dark mantle over the scene, there was no feeling of joy, only one of relief from the excitement of hope and fear ever incident to the wager of battle.
The good people of Marietta, who often watched from house tops these scenes of excitement, will never forget them.
It was during this battle that one of the noblest deeds of humanity was performed the world has ever witnessed. We have the Bible account of the man who, "going from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among thieves," and the good Samaritan who "had compassion on him and bound up his wounds;" we have Sir Philip Sidney, and the generous conduct of a French cuirassier at Waterloo who, seeing Maj. Poten, of the King's German Legion, had lost his right arm, when about to cut him down, dropped the point of his sword to the salute and rode away. The French soldier was happily discovered, and received the cross of the Legion of Honor. But here we have "Col. W. H. Martin, of the First Arkansas Regiment, of Cleburne's Division, who, seeing the woods in front of him on fire burning the wounded Federals, tied a handkerchief to a ramrod and amidst the danger of battle mounted the parapet and shouted to the enemy: 'Come and remove your wounded; they are burning to death; we won't fire a gun till you get them away. Be quick!' And with his own men he leaped over our works and helped to remove them. When this work of humanity was ended a noble Federal major was so impressed by such magnanimity that he pulled from his belt a brace of fine pistols and presented them to Col. Martin with the remark: 'Accept them with my appreciation of the nobility of this deed. It deserves to be perpetuated to the deathless honor of every one of you concerned in it; and should you fight a thousand other battles, and win a thousand other victories, you will never win another so noble as this.' Alas! alas! The noble Col. Martin lived to return to his home. His lovely wife died, leaving an only child. Broken-hearted, he sailed to Honduras, as he said, to make a fortune for his little girl, and there, one day when sailing in a small boat on the —— river, with only a boy to help him, the boom struck him on the head, knocking him overboard, where he was drowned. Such is the irony of fate."[27]