LONGS TREET AT KNOXVILLE.



fantry which made them at once an admiration
and a delight to their comrades in the artillery.
  For a few minutes about a dozen guns poured a
hot fire into the angle of the lines back of the fort,
and the success with which they threw their shells
about it, even in, the dim light, made it all the
harder to bear that the plan of attack had been
changed and the artillery was not allowed to try
its full strength. Then we ceased firing to leave
a clear field for the storming column, except a few
shots from a battery that could reach the ground
in rear of the fort.
  Meanwhile the assaulting column formed, ad-
vanced to the line of rifle-pits, and then swarmed
over them and rushed for the fort. Almost im-
mediately they found themselves in
an entanglement of telegraph wires
stretched a few inches above the
ground and fastened to stumps and
stakes. This, however, was quickly
broken up, and the men pressed for-
ward rapidly to the ditch around the
fort, receiving a severe musketry fire
from  its parapet and two or three
discharges of canister from  guns
which were able to reach a part of
the ground traversed. It was impos-
sible, however, to maintain ranks in
this rapid advance, in darkness, over
unknown ground with such obstacles,
and under so close a fire. It resulted
that the three brigades converged in
a mass and without order around the
north-west bastion. It was here that
the ditch was supposed to be easily
passable.
  On the western face, indeed, it
proved to be only about four-and-a-
half feet deep, and ordinarily a ditch
of that depth would not be a serious obstacle.
But that morning the ground was frozen and very
slippery, and, in addition, Colonel 0. M. Poe,
General Burnside's chief engineer, anticipating an
assault, had made a very important variation in
the ordinary profile of the ditch and parapet.
Ordinarily there is left a space of about a foot be-
tween the edge of the ditch and the foot of the
parapet, which space is called the " berme." (See
cut, p. 750.]
  It will be readily seen that to a man attempting
to scale the parapet the bernie is a great assist-
ance, giving a foothold whence it is easy to rush
up the exterior slope, which cannot be made steeper
than forty-five degrees. Here the herme had been
entirely cut away. To the right and left of the
western face of the bastion the ditch grew deeper
until it reached ten feet in places, and the parapet
was raised in places by cotton bales. The advance
was, of course, checked by the ditch, and the men
generally swarmed along the edge, uncertain what

4Colonel 8. Z. Ruff, 18th Georgia, commanding Wof-
ford's brigade; Colonel H. P. Thom.as, of the lath
Georgia; and Colonel Kennon McElroy, 13th Missis-
sippi. were killed, and Lieutenant-Colonel Flser, 17th
Mississppi, lost an arm upon the parapet. Adjutant
T. W. Cumming, of the lath Georgia, penetrated the



to do, and firing into the embrasures and at such
of the enemy as ventured to show their heads over
the parapet. This soon silenced the direct fire
upon them from the parapet, except an occasional
musket raised overhead to the level of the interior
crest and fired without aim. The fort was so
nearly silenced that looking on from the guns we
thought it had surrendered, though some fire con-
tinued to come from the left.
  Meanwhile many of the officers, color-bearers,
and men jumped into the ditch and attempted to
scale the parapet. The slippery slopes and the
absence of a berme prevented their success in such
numbers as to accomplish any result, and the gal-
lant fellows going up one by one were shot down



FOaRT STANLEY, KNOXVILLE. FROM A PruTOGRAPII.

from the inside as fast as they crowned the para-
pet. Nowhere in the war was individual example
more splendidly illustrated than on that fatal slope
and in that bloody ditch.
  Some of the battle-flags were planted on the ex-
terior crest and maintained there for some time by
a succession of color-bearers. 4 For fully twenty
minutes the men stood around the ditch unable to
get at their adversaries, but unwilling to retreat.
Lieutenant Benjamin, commanding the artillery
within the fort, made hand-grenades of his shells
and exploded several within the ditch. Long-
street, seeing the flash of their explosions, and
thinking them to be our own shells falling short,
ordered the cessation of the slight artillery fire
which we had continued to throw on the flanks and
beyond the fort. [See note, p. 744.] At last, day-
light having succeeded dawn, and further effort
being plainly hopeless, the men sulkily withdrew.
As the main force fell back Anderson's brigade
of Jenkins's division, which was to take up the

tort through an embrasure and was captured inside.
assuring his captors that they would all be his prisoners
within a few minutes. Lieutenant Munger, of the 9th
Georgia, got into another embrasure, and, finding him-
self alone, emptied a revolver at the gunners and made
his escape.- E. P. A.



749