<p>White paper with typed black text</p>
<p>This thrilling episode is captured in Humphrey’s unpublished manuscript which was written shortly after the war:
I discovered that a federal battery to my right had rallied and was annoying Kershaw to our right and rear, and would soon turn on Barksdale’s brigade as enfilade fire. I immediately wheeled the 21st to the right and headed directly against the battery which was captured….
When I reached it I found Lieut. George Kempton of Co. I, astraddle of a gun waving his sword and exclaiming, “Colonel, I claim this gun for Company I”. Lieut. W. P. McNeily was astraddle of another, claiming it for Company E. I now wanted to rejoin the brigade. But just then another battery was seen in position three hundred yards off, beyond the ravine. The order was given to charge it. On the brave regiment moved – yelling and firing and captured the battery of five guns. From the positions I occupied then, no enemy could be seen or heard in my front. Not a gun was being fired at me. The federal army was cut in twain. Eight hundred yards, to my right, a confused mass was retreating, driven by McLaws, and Hood. I attempted to turn the guns just captured on them but no rammers or friction wires could be found. Eight hundred yards to my left, the enemy’s line was kept busy by Barksdale. Soon a long solid line of infantry was seen advancing down the road towards us. The word for retreat was given, and the regiment fell back to the stone fence where we captured the first battery. The enemy fired on us a volley about five hundred yards distant, killing and wounding a few of our men. Finding we had halted the enemy came no farther.
The noted correspondent for the Cincinnati Gazette, Whitelaw Reid was on the field and wrote the following account of the capture of Bigelow’s battery by the Twenty-first Mississippi:
Some Massachusetts batteries – Captain John Bigelow’s, Captain C. A. Phillips’, two or three more under Captain Freeman McGillivray of Maine – were planted on the extreme left, advanced now well down to the Emmetsburg road, with infantry in their front – the first division, I think, of Sickles’ Corps. A little after five a fierce rebel charge drove back the infantry and menaced the batteries. Orders are sent to Bigelow, on the extreme left, to hold his position at every hazard … Reserving his fire a little, then with depressed guns opening with double charges of grape and canister, he smites and shatters, but cannot break the advancing line. His grape and canister are exhausted, and still, closing grandly up over their slain, on they come. He falls back on spherical case, and pours this in at the shortest range. On, still onward, comes the artillery defying line, and still he holds his position. They are within six paces of the guns – he fires again. Once more, and he blows devoted soldiers from his very muzzles. And still mindful of that solemn order, he holds his place.</p>
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