23rd.North Carolina Regiment in blue Lettering

 Brig. Gen. S. Garland Jr. Killed at South Mountain Garland's Brigade

  5th.North Carolina Regiment

12th.North Carolina Regiment

13th.North Carolina Regiment

20th.North Carolina Regiment

    23rd.North Carolina Regiment**

THE BATTLE FOR SOUTH MOUNTAIN 

( 1.)

Brigadier General Isaac Rodman's division also halted west of Cato Tin Mountain to wait for a stray brigade. Colonel Harrison S. Fairchild's brigade ( 9th, 89th, and 103rd New York) stumbled into Frederick before 11 :00 P.M., less one squad from the 9th New York which was left on duty, by accident, at Jefferson. 162 The brigade arrived in Frederick in time to prevent a jail break by the Confederate prisoners.

Around 11:30 P.M., inmates in the Frederick County jail set fire to the building. Sheriff Michael Zimmerman started to haul the office furniture out- side. Captain William G. Barnett and Second Lieutenant James Homer (both of Company B) of the 9th New York, who took. French leave" and did not go on the Jefferson expedition, saw the flames shooting out of the roof and reacted quickly. Homer stayed to remove the jail's furnishings and to fight the fire. Barnett raced to the regiment's bivouac of the night before and by chance' happened to find Lieutenant Colonel Edgar Kimball and the regiment which had bedded down less than half an hour before. The colonel sent the captain back with three companies. They arrived about the same time that the sheriff and Lieutenant Homer started to open the cell doors and herd the gagging prisoners into the jail yard. Barnett posted road guards on the streets to surround the prison pen and at the same time placed sentries on the high walls around the court yard. Another detachment of the New Yorkers fought the fire in vain. The wooden interior of the jail went up like a match. The stone outer walls contained the fire. Those three worn out companies of the 9th New York, having marched twenty-five miles that day, got no sleep that night. By 10:00 P.M., the bulk of the Army of the Potomac had settled in for the night. The VI Corps covered an area from Buckeystown to Adamstown to Jefferson.  The I Corps, II Corps, XII Corps, and Brigadier General George Sykes' division of the V Corps bedded down around the eastern side of Frederick. Major General Darius N. Couch's IV Corps division occupied Licksville, south of Buckeystown. As usual, the Federal cavalry provided a thin screen. The 1.st Rhode Island Cavalry covered the fords south of Point of Rocks on the Potomac. The 6th U.S. Cavalry scouted as far as a mile or so beyond Jefferson, and Colonel John Farnsworth's brigade was bottled up about two miles east of Turner's Gap. The average distance covered by any corps that day was about seven miles. None of the infantry forces were within easy striking distance of any of the three passes along South Mountain. The Confederates were not in much better shape. Brigadier General Paul Semmes' two brigades of some 1,114 men stretched about one mile, with half of the troops at the top of Crampton's Gap. During the retreat from Middletown, Stuart sent a courier to Major General Daniel H. Hill at Boonsboro, stating that he was being pursued by two brigades of Federal cavalry and that he needed an infantry brigade to assist him.168 Hill sent Colonel Alfred Colquitt's (13th Alabama, 6th, 23rd, 27th, and 28th Georgia), and Brigadier General Samuel Garland's brigades ( 5th, 12th, 13th, 20th, 23rd North Carolina), with Captains John Lane's North Carolina and J. W. Bondurant's Alabama Regiment's.

( 3.)

Not very long after they started their surveillance, both officers noticed movement along the mountain road to the southeast. Colonel McRae called for fifty skirmishers from the 5th North Carolina to sweep through the woods to their right front in an attempt to flank whoever it was moving about down in the hollow . The two officers had no idea how close the Federals were to their position. The thick undergrowth and closely packed trees forced part of the 5th North Carolina to file to the left until some of the line cleared the woods on the right flank.

Company I of the 23rd Ohio, which was entangled in the woods along the mountain road, did not see them coming. The soldiers of the 23rd North Carolina, from their elevated position on the wood road along the mountain's summit, helplessly watched the two lines converge. On the opposite slope southeast of the Confederate position, Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes ( 23rd Ohio) saw them also and responded immediately. Halting the regiment, he faced them by the rear rank. He centered himself on the regiment to deliver a "brave up" talk, as Company F retired to the battle line. With his eyes shining, he said, "Now boys, remember you are the 23rd and give them Hell. In these woods the rebels don't know but we are 10,000; and if we fight, and when we charge yell, we are as good as 10,000 by God." He wheeled his horse about. "Give them Hell! Give the sons of bitches Hell." The regiment stumbled down the rocky heavily wooded slope toward the mountain road. By then, the two skirmish lines had collided with one another. Companies A and I of the 23rd Ohio methodically herded the North Carolinians back toward the cornfield near the top of the mountain. Private Robert B. Corn- well (Company A) coldly went about his work as if he were stalking game. He loaded, and fired fourteen rounds at the backs of the Rebels. He bragged, "...if some of them didn't do execution it is not my fait for I had a good rest [for] all but 2 shots." His company killed at least eight of the enemy before the 23rd Ohio came to its assistance. As the first reports of the rifle fire echoed up the mountain side, Samuel Garland yelled at Colonel Duncan McRae to bring up the rest of the 5th North Carolina. The woods on its right disrupted the regiment's formation. Filing to the left, it came to front in the open field below the brow of the hill in a slight hollow. Reforming, it marched up to the belt of woods which dominated the next rise of ground. By the time the North Carolinians had gotten beyond the far side of the woods, the 23rd Ohio had crossed the mountain road into the open ground to their right front: The Confederates delivered a telling volley into the startled Ohioans which staggered their advance. The fighting quickly evolved from an uncertain firefight to a desperate shootout. The lines consolidated as the officers recall- ed their skirmishers and the men settled down to do some wholesale killing. Colonel Hayes gave the Rebels no respite.

( 4.) 

The 23rd Ohio's bugler sounded the "Charge." The Ohioans yelled and hollered as they surged forward, and scattered the

untried conscripts on the right flank of the 5th North Carolina. Their sharp- shooters took cover behind the stone wall on the Rebels' right flank and opened fire. Their shots whistled into Captain Bondurant's artillerists, wounding three of them, among them John Purifoy Who was stationed at the southern most gun.

When Garland saw the North Carolina conscripts burst from the woods and head into the hollow east of the cornfield, he sent for the 12th North Carolina. Captain Shugan Snow of Company I, who had recently been promoted from private to company then regimental command, boldly led his company sized regiment to the eastern edge of the cornfield, where they halted to deliver a volley. Another Federal line, farther to the north and more extensive than that of the 23rd Ohio emerged from the woods on a northwesterly course. Companies A and F of the 12th Ohio, thanks to their reputable civilian guide, crossed Peter Beachley's lane directly below the muzzles of Bondurant's battery. As the two companies brought themselves to face west, the rest of their regiment crossed the farm lane and went into line on the left. The right companies fired a volley to the left front which knocked down several North Carolinians as they fled through the woods toward the cornfield near the crest of the hill. At the same time, the 30th Ohio came into front, north of the Old Sharpsburg Road, on the right of the 12th Ohio. The 12th North Carolina, caught in a crossfire from the skirmishers to their right, left and front, fired wildly at the newly arrived Ohioans, then fled from the field. Samuel Garland spurred up to the 23rd North Carolina, along the wood road, and ordered Colonel Daniel H. Christie to advance into the northern end of the cornfield to the left of the 5th North Carolina's rattled conscripts. Without waiting to see them deployed, Garland galloped north on the wood road to bring his two remaining regiments, the 13th and the 20th North Carolina, onto the field. In the meantime, the left wing of the 5th North Carolina retired a short distance then stubbornly held its ground. Lieutenant Colonel Hayes (23rd Ohio) frantically reformed his line before the men became too carried away by the impetus of their own attack. The Confederates' musketry suddenly in- creased in volume as they fought it out toe to toe. The North Carolinians put up a determined resistance. They were buying time for the rest of the brigade while Duncan McRae of the 5th North Carolina departed to chase after the remainder of his command. He managed- ed to rally his rattled right wing at the cornfield and bring them back to the wall. While McRae attempted to save his regiment from further disgrace, General Garland, who was on his way back to the cornfield, passed Bondurant's battery and yelled for the gunners to fire and then retire north. The artillerists heard him and several line officers from the 12th North Carolina screaming at their routed soldiers to regroup. The infantry officers managed to bring part of the regiment under control. Those men of the 12th North Carolina who stayed upon the field retreated north to join ranks with the 13th North Carolina as it crossed the Sharpsburg Road. Garland did not wait for the battery to fire. Continuing southeast,

he  rejoined Colonel McRae in the cornfield. Almost immediately, a bugler behind the belt of woods below their position blew the "Charge." The 23rd Ohio was rushing the 5th North Carolina again. The general suggested to McRae that he recall his regiment and he sent a runner off immediately with the command. The outgunned 5th North Carolina, under Colonel McRae's instructions, withdrew as quickly as possible to the rear. While the Rebels scrambled through the hollow, heading back toward the cornfield, McRae told Garland he suspected the Federals, who had collected a superior force in the woods to their front and right, intended to turn his right. He further .advised the general to shell the eastern part of the field to expose the Yankee position. Garland said the Yankee sharpshooters had forced the battery to quit the field and rode off to the left of the line.

By then, the 23rd Ohio had gotten to the stone wall one hundred yards east of the 5th North Carolina and the 23rd North Carolina. There the Ohioans ran into a deadly barrage. The Rebels picked off officers with unnerving accuracy. Captain John W. Skiles (Company C) went down with a shattered arm. Captain Abraham A. Hunter and Lieutenant James Naughton (both Company F) fell wounded as did Lieutenant Ritter. When the Ohioans rushed into the woods, Colonel Hayes dismounted and ran after them. Seconds after the regiment reached the clearing on the opposite side, when he was standing about twenty feet behind his line, a bullet smashed his left arm just above the elbow. It carried away half of the bone, leaving a ragged wound in the back of his arm. The impact staggered him, but he would not fall. Believing he had been hit in the artery, he cried. for an enlisted man to tie off the blood flow with his handkerchief. Nausea and the blood loss forced him to lie down to regain his composure. Four canister rounds, in delayed succession, added anew but very short lived dimension to what had been an infantry engagement. Captain Bondurant ordered his guns to fire by the right oblique, which placed the pieces in column. He could only fire one gun at a time. Consequently, each crew fired its piece in turn, limbered up, and pulled north along the wood road toward Daniel Wise's cabin. Those four bursts startled Colonel George Crook's brigade ( 11th. 28th, and seven companies of the 36th Ohio) as it filed into the ravine east of Peter Beachley's house. The 11th. Ohio was on the left, in the woods. The 28th Ohio held the open ground in the center, and the seven companies of the 36th Ohio extended the line to the right to the Old Sharpsburg Road near J. Martz's house.

( 5.)

On the right, the 12th Ohio and the 30th Ohio bellied up the hill doing everything they could to stay below the sights of the two North Carolina regiments in the cornfield to their left front. They had no idea that Bondurant's battery had left the field and that another regiment-the 20th North Carolina had gone into line behind the stone wall along the ridge. The two regiments remained prone and let the 23rd Ohio absorb the Rebels' ammunition. Colonel Hayes regained consciousness. Painfully raising his head to look about, he realized he was alone. He loudly pleaded, "Hello, 23rd men! Are you going to leave your colonel here for the enemy?" Six volunteers dashed from the cover of the woods, offering to take the colonel wherever he wanted to go. Their presence, however, attracted too much fire. As Hayes weakly commanded them to return to the regiment, the small arms fire picked up again. Minutes later, Lieutenant Benjamin W. Jackson (Company C) scrambled through the clearing and dragged the colonel back to the woods. The lieutenant laid him down behind a log and went back to the firing line. The musket fire died away as quickly as it began. As the regiment cautiously edged its way across the open ground back to the stone wall, Lieutenant Jackson returned to Colonel Hayes and started down the hill with him toward Peter Beachley's house, where the surgeons had established the division's field hospital. Lieutenant Robert B. Wilson (Company F, 12th Ohio) remembered seeing the colonel wandering to the rear with his arm in a sling. About that time, the soldiers of the 12th Ohio, with the 30th Ohio on its right in the woods, crawled on their hands and knees to the cover of the stonewall on the brow of the hill. From where he lay, Private Samuel Compton (Company F) heard the Confederate officers shouting commands at their men. The orders resounded clearly. The private estimated that they were just over the crest, some sixty feet away-too close-too close. His officers, also, must have thought they were within easy striking distance of the North Carolinians. The order rippled down the line to charge. The instant the men gained their feet the command to "lie down" echoed overhead. The glint of sunlight reflecting off the leveled muskets of the 23rd North Carolina sent Samuel Compton and his comrades to the ground. As the smoke cleared from the front of the 23rd North Carolina, they believed they had cut down the entire Yankee regiment. (Their volley dropped a handful of the Ohioans.) The Westerners did not want to make another attempt to dislodge the Rebels from their seemingly impregnable position. The sun beat down upon the sweating troops. The ground heated up. The stones in the wall started to lose their natural coolness. Some of the officers, including Colonel Carr B. White (12th Ohio), plugged their canteens into their mouths with increasing frequency. The pungent smell of army whiskey occasionally stabbed at the enlisted men's nostrils and brought with it a foreboding that they would have to rely upon themselves for direction in the ensuing engagement; The heat also brought out an unwanted intruder. A mountain rattlesnake slithered out from under the stonewall and quietly started to wind its way across the prostrate enlisted men. The men froze, allowing the reptile to stay on its course, unmolested. The snake continued crawling from man to man until one fellow snapped. Jumping to his feet, he killed the snake (probably with his rifle butt) and threw himself to the ground before the Rebs had a chance to pick him off. Sharpshooters still pinged minie balls off the rocks over their heads.

( 6.)

On the far left of the Federal line, the 11.th Ohio, under orders to attract the Rebels' attention and to deliberately draw their fire, crashed into the woods on the 23rd North Carolina's right front. Colonel Christie's (23rd North Carolina) main line and some stray skirmishers in the woods to the south fired into the Ohioans and forced them back upon the left of the 23rd Ohio. Once the 11.th Ohio rejoined the line, the infantrymen of the 23rd and the 12th Ohio regiments, upon command, gave a prolonged cheer and sprang en masse over the wall. The moment Colonel Daniel H. Christie (23rd North Carolina) saw the Yankees burst into his line of sight, he realized they would envelop his left flank. He screamed at Adjutant Veines E. Turner to find General Samuel Garland, and apprise him of his situation. The lieutenant raced away on foot to deliver a message to a general who, unknown to him, was bleeding to death on the front steps of the Mountain House. He had barely passed behind the rear of Colonel Alfred Iverson's 20th North Carolina when his own regiment and the 5th North Carolina, in the cornfield to the southeast, volleyed once into Eliakim Scammon's two regiments and into the flank of the 11th Ohio. The dense laurel on the 5th North Carolina's right flank destroyed the 11.th Ohio's formation. Lieutenant Colonel Augustus H. Coleman (11.th Ohio), an ostrich plume bobbing jauntily from his Jeff Davis hat, valiantly reformed what he could find of the regiment, and pushed them farther west, toward the wood road where it turned west, behind the Confederate lines. While his men struggled with the terrain, the 23rd Ohio stormed toward an opening in the stonewall between the right of the 23rd North Carolina and the left of the 5th North Carolina. At the same instant, part of the 12th Ohio struck the North Carolinians from the northeast, while the rest of the regiment surged forward against the 20th North Carolina, which was along the wood road. Neither the 5th North Carolina nor Colonel Daniel Christie's men (23rd North Carolina) had time to reload before the Ohioans savagely pitched into them with their bayonets. The 5th North Carolina, Captain Thomas M. Garrett commanding, scattered to the rear before the 23rd Ohio reached it. Colonel Christie needlessly screamed for his line to retreat. The sun glinting off the onrushing line of steel shouted louder than he could. Most of his regiment bolted like jumped game toward the wood road. Adjutant Veines E. Turner of the 23rd North Carolina missed the bulk of the regiment as it leaped and stumbled through the laurel on the mountain's western slope. Not realizing that most of the soldiers had retreated, he continued, with his distressing message, toward the regiment's former position. Colonel Duncan McRae of the 5th North Carolina, the acting brigade commander, whom he found stranded near the 13th North Carolina along.

( 7.)On the right, the 12th Ohio and the 30th Ohio bellied up the hill doing everything they could to stay below the sights of the two North Carolina regiments in the cornfield to their left front. They had no idea that Bondurant's battery had left the field and that another regiment-the 20th North Carolina had gone into line behind the stone wall along the ridge. The two regiments remained prone and let the 23rd Ohio absorb the Rebels' ammunition. Colonel Hayes regained consciousness. Painfully raising his head to look about, he realized he was alone. He loudly pleaded, "Hello, 23rd men! Are you going to leave your colonel here for the enemy?" Six volunteers dashed from the cover of the woods, offering to take the colonel wherever he wanted to go. Their presence, however, attracted too much fire. As Hayes weakly commanded them to return to the regiment, the small arms fire picked up again. Minutes later, Lieutenant Benjamin W. Jackson (Company C) scrambled through the clearing and dragged the colonel back to the woods. The lieutenant laid him down behind a log and went back to the firing line. The musket fire died away as quickly as it began. As the regiment cautiously edged its way across the open ground back to the stone wall, Lieutenant Jackson returned to Colonel Hayes and started down the hill with him toward Peter Beachley's house, where the surgeons had established the division's field hospital. Lieutenant Robert B. Wilson (Company F, 12th Ohio) remembered seeing the colonel wandering to the rear with his arm in a sling. About that time, the soldiers of the 12th Ohio, with the 30th Ohio on its right in the woods, crawled on their hands and knees to the cover of the stonewall on the brow of the hill. From where he lay, Private Samuel Compton (Company F) heard the Confederate officers shouting commands at their men. The orders resounded clearly. The private estimated that they were just over the crest, some sixty feet away-too close-too close. His officers, also, must have thought they were within easy striking distance of the North Carolinians. The order rippled down the line to charge. The instant the men gained their feet the command to "lie down" echoed overhead. The glint of sunlight reflecting off the leveled muskets of the 23rd North Carolina sent Samuel Compton and his comrades to the ground. As the smoke cleared from the front of the 23rd North Carolina, they believed they had cut down the entire Yankee regiment. (Their volley dropped a handful of the Ohioans.) The Westerners did not want to make another attempt to dislodge the Rebels from their seemingly impregnable position. The sun beat down upon the sweating troops. The ground heated up. The stones in the wall started to lose their natural coolness. Some of the officers, including Colonel Carr B. White (12th Ohio), plugged their canteens into their mouths with increasing frequency. The pungent smell of army whiskey occasionally stabbed at the enlisted men's nostrils and brought with it a foreboding that they would have to rely upon themselves for direction in the ensuing engagement; The heat also brought out an unwanted intruder. A mountain rattlesnake slithered out from under the stonewall and quietly started to wind its way across the prostrate enlisted men. The men froze, allowing the reptile to stay on its course, unmolested. The snake continued crawling from man to man until one fellow snapped. Jumping to his feet, he killed the snake (probably with his rifle butt) and threw himself to the ground before the Rebs had a chance to pick him off. Sharpshooters still pinged minie balls off the rocks over their heads. The wood road, east of Wise's field, had nervously informed him that, because he had neither staff officers nor a horse with which to contact General Hill, there would be no reinforcements. The startled adjutant rushed back to the cornfield and nearly collided with the Ohioans as they surrounded Company E of the 23rd North Carolina, which, in the suddenness of the attack, had not gotten the word to withdraw. Bare muzzles clanged against leveled bayonets around the stonewall as the melee devolved into a killing frenzy. Private Charles R. Stevens (Company A, 23rd Ohio) hastily dispatched three of the Confederates before they could surrender. Nearby Sergeant Major Eugene Reynolds (23rd Ohio) and several Ohioans went down from bayonet thrusts. On the right, the 20th North Carolina waited until the 12th Ohio got to within fifteen feet of the wood road before it fired. A number of the Ohioans in Company E crumbled in the blast. A minie ball smashed into the forestock of Corporal Leonidas H. Inscho's rifle, driving splinters into his left hand. Frightened by his wounding, he madly dashed to the safety of the stone wall. Unwilling to die from multiple stabbings, most of the North Carolinians turned their backs and scrambled into the woods behind them. The Westerners, their adrenalin charged bodies too excited to calm down, split into two wings to respond both to the fleeing Confederates to their front and to the trapped North Carolinians (23rd North Carolina) on their left. Corporal Leonidaslnscho (Company E, 12th Ohio), who had huddled below the lip of the wall to examine his rifle and his hand, suddenly realized that the men on his left had abandoned him. He quickly poked his head over the wall only to find himself face to face with a Rebel captain. The plucky Ohioan, with more bravado than brains, leaped up, snatched the officer by the collar, and demanded he surrender. The officer refused and leveled his revolver at Inscho's face. The corporal grabbed the revolver by the barrel and forced it skyward. The- officer's finger convulsed on the trigger and the gun fired. Inscho jerked the weapon from the Confederate's grasp. The North Carolinian repeatedly pelted the Ohioan in the face with his bare fists, as the corporal struggled to haul him head first over the three-foot high stone wall. Bracing his right foot against the stones, the corporal jerked the captain off balaflce and landed him flat on his back on the eastern side. Picking up the Rebel's revolver, the corporal boldly jutted his head above the wall. A short distance away, he spied five more Southerners behind a laurel tree. Pointing his weapon at them, he demanded their surrender and much to his amazement, four of them did. As they threw their rifles to the ground . and stepped out into the open, the fifth man advanced toward Inscho with his rifle primed. Swearing that he would never surrender, he leveled his piece at Inscho. There was a report and a small puff of smoke. The bullet splattered against the stonewall as the agile Yankee ducked down behind it. The soldier turned to run away. Inscho stood up and icily dispatched him with the remaining five shots in the service revolver. With the muzzle still smoking, he turned upon his five prisoners and ordered them to the rear. They complied. To the right of the line, the remaining companies of the 12th Ohio's righting viciously fired into the back of the rest of the 20th North Carolina as crashed through the woods on the western slope of the mountain. Captain Lewis T. Hicks (Company E, 20th North Carolina) listened to the bullets snap e branches and leaves off the trees above his head as he and his company I 1f ran and half fell down the steep mountainside Samuel Compton of le 12th Ohio, in the ecstacy of the chase, mistakenly assumed that the Conderates he saw topple from sight were the victims of his company's Leadership. In his fury , a Yankee deliberately gunned down Assistant Surgeon William. Jordan (23rd North Carolina) while he tended to the wounded too close I the firing line. His dear friend, the 23rd's N.C. Adjutant v. E. Turner sadly wanted him fall before he escaped to the safety of the woods. Farther to the north, Lieutenant Wilson of the 12th Ohio saw one of his  lunge at a young Carolinian who had already raised his hands to surrender. The quick thinking officer snatched the man's rifle by the barrel before e completed his strike. The quaking Yankee infantryman disappeared into the woods to continue the pursuit while the captain attempted to pry some Intelligence from the equally shaken Confederate. When asked for his regiment number, the "handsome bright looking" fellow, Wilson recalled, stunned am by telling him. Wilson forgot the state, though he never forgot the number . In wittingly he had captured a stray from the 12th North Carolina. The impact of the Ohioan attack forced the Confederates to abandon their lounged. The Yankees bagged an estimated. two hundred prisoners with that charge. Some of the Ohioans attempted to alleviate the suffering of the in J. Samuel Compton stumbled across a teenager who was sitting upright against a tree along the wood road. He pleaded with Compton for some water. unable to refuse, despite his own short supply, the private handed his canteen to the boy. The wounded soldier snatched it from Compton's hand and verity drained it. As he handed it back, Compton shook the canteen. When he realized it vas empty, a violent shiver snaked its way down his spine. It was bad luck o go into combat without any water . "Won't you take a message to my mother?" the Confederate gasped. 'Tell my mother it's her fault I'm here." Before Compton could ask his name, the Carolinian slumped over dead. Having no time for sympathy, the private disappeared into the woods where most of Scammon's brigade and the 11^th. Ohio foolishly thrashed about like he "beaters" in a stag hunt. While the 11.th

 12th, and 23rd Ohio Regiments forced the mountain crest It the points of their bayonets, their casualties began to limp and stagger to he field hospitals at Beachley's and along the Old Sharpsburg Road. Chaplain William Lyle (11th.Ohio) had just given directions to the ambulance crews n the ravine east of Beachley's and was starting to return when the 23rd North Carolina volleyed into the 23rd Ohio. The musket balls whizzed and zinged

( 8.)On the right, the 12th Ohio and the 30th Ohio bellied up the hill doing everything they could to stay below the sights of the two North Carolina regiments in the cornfield to their left front. They had no idea that Bondurant's battery had left the field and that another regiment-the 20th North Carolina had gone into line behind the stone wall along the ridge. The two regiments remained prone and let the 23rd Ohio absorb the Rebels' ammunition. Colonel Hayes regained consciousness. Painfully raising his head to look about, he realized he was alone. He loudly pleaded, "Hello, 23rd men! Are you going to leave your colonel here for the enemy?" Six volunteers dashed from the cover of the woods, offering to take the colonel wherever he wanted to go. Their presence, however, attracted too much fire. As Hayes weakly commanded them to return to the regiment, the small arms fire picked up again. Minutes later, Lieutenant Benjamin W. Jackson (Company C) scrambled through the clearing and dragged the colonel back to the woods. The lieutenant laid him down behind a log and went back to the firing line. The musket fire died away as quickly as it began. As the regiment cautiously edged its way across the open ground back to the stonewall, Lieutenant Jackson returned to Colonel Hayes and started down the hill with him toward Peter Beachley's house, where the surgeons had established the division's field hospital. Lieutenant Robert B. Wilson (Company F, 12th Ohio) remembered seeing the colonel wandering to the rear with his arm in a sling. About that time, the soldiers of the 12th Ohio, with the 30th Ohio on its right in the woods, crawled on their hands and knees to the cover of the stonewall on the brow of the hill. From where he lay, Private Samuel Compton (Company F) heard the Confederate officers shouting commands at their men. The orders resounded clearly. The private estimated that they were just over the crest, some sixty feet away-too close-too close. His officers, also, must have thought they were within easy striking distance of the North Carolinians. The order rippled down the line to charge. The instant the men gained their feet the command to "lie down" echoed overhead. The glint of sunlight reflecting off the leveled muskets of the 23rd North Carolina sent Samuel Compton and his comrades to the ground. As the smoke cleared from the front of the 23rd North Carolina, they believed they had cut down the entire Yankee regiment. (Their volley dropped a handful of the Ohioans.) The Westerners did not want to make another attempt to dislodge the Rebels from their seemingly impregnable position. The sun beat down upon the sweating troops. The ground heated up. The stones in the wall started to lose their natural coolness. Some of the officers, including Colonel Carr B. White (12th Ohio), plugged their canteens into their mouths with increasing frequency. The pungent smell of army whiskey occasionally stabbed at the enlisted men's nostrils and brought with it a foreboding that they would have to rely upon themselves for direction in the ensuing engagement; The heat also brought out an unwanted intruder. A mountain rattlesnake slithered out from under the stonewall and quietly started to wind its way across the prostrate enlisted men. The men froze, allowing the reptile to stay on its course, unmolested. The snake continued crawling from man to man until one fellow snapped. Jumping to his feet, he killed the snake (probably with his rifle butt) and threw himself to the ground before the Rebs had a chance to pick him off. Sharpshooters still pinged minie balls off the rocks over their heads. The wood road, east of Wise's field, had nervously informed him that, because he had neither staff officers nor a horse with which to contact General Hill, there would be no reinforcements. The startled adjutant rushed back to the cornfield and nearly collided with the Ohioans as they surrounded Company E of the 23rd North Carolina, which, in the suddenness of the attack, had not gotten the word to withdraw. Bare muzzles clanged against leveled bayonets around the stonewall as the melee devolved into a killing frenzy. Private Charles R. Stevens (Company A, 23rd Ohio) hastily dispatched three of the Confederates before they could surrender. Nearby Sergeant Major Eugene Reynolds (23rd Ohio) and several Ohioans went down from bayonet thrusts. On the right, the 20th North Carolina waited until the 12th Ohio got to within fifteen feet of the wood road before it fired. A number of the Ohioans in Company E crumbled in the blast. A minie ball smashed into the forestock of Corporal Leonidas H. Inscho's rifle, driving splinters into his left hand. Frightened by his wounding, he madly dashed to the safety of the stone wall. Unwilling to die from multiple stabbings, most of the North Carolinians turned their backs and scrambled into the woods behind them. The Westerners, their adrenalin charged bodies too excited to calm down, split into two wings to respond both to the fleeing Confederates to their front and to the trapped North Carolinians (23rd North Carolina) on their left. Corporal Leonidaslnscho (Company E, 12th Ohio), who had huddled below the lip of the wall to examine his rifle and his hand, suddenly realized that the men on his left had abandoned him. He quickly poked his head over the wall only to find himself face to face with a Rebel captain. The plucky Ohioan, with more bravado than brains, leaped up, snatched the officer by the collar, and demanded he surrender. The officer refused and leveled his revolver at Inscho's face. The corporal grabbed the revolver by the barrel and forced it skyward. The- officer's finger convulsed on the trigger and the gun fired. Inscho jerked the weapon from the Confederate's grasp. The North Carolinian repeatedly pelted the Ohioan in the face with his bare fists, as the corporal struggled to haul him head first over the three-foot high stone wall. Bracing his right foot against the stones, the corporal jerked the captain off balaflce and landed him flat on his back on the eastern side. Picking up the Rebel's revolver, the corporal boldly jutted his head above the wall. A short distance away, he spied five more Southerners behind a laurel tree. Pointing his weapon at them, he demanded their surrender and much to his amazement, four of them did. As they threw their rifles to the ground . and stepped out into the open, the fifth man advanced toward Inscho with his rifle primed. Swearing that he would never surrender, he leveled his piece at Inscho. There was a report and a small puff of smoke. The bullet splattered against the stone wall as the agile Yankee ducked down behind it. The soldier turned to run away. Inscho stood up and icily dispatched him with the remaining five shots in the service revolver. With the muzzle still smoking, he turned upon his five prisoners and ordered them to the rear. They complied. "I would if I had it. The other is brandy." As Compton escorted the colonel uphill toward the wood road, he shed all the patriotic illusions he had ever harbored to explain the many Federal defeats in the East. Unfortunately, a good many of the line officers in the 12th Ohio were drunk. Farther to the south, forty men and two officers of the 11th Ohio were fighting a private war of their own. In their frenzied pursuit of the North Carolinians they got cut off from the main body of the regiment and found themselves engaged with scattered clusters of retreating Confederates. Farther behind them Colonel Carr B. White of the 12th Ohio. Like many of his line officers on September 14, near the wood road, the right wing 1862, he was drinking hard liquor during the of the regiment stalled just inside battle of Fox's Gap. the wood line and took cover from  the overshoots from the cornfield east of them. The attack against the 23rd North Carolina sapped the 23rd Ohio of its combat effectiveness for the day. The morning's fighting cost the regiment more than one hundred men in killed, wounded, and missing- among them, the colonel and seven company officers. Unable to press the attack, the regiment bellied down in the cornfield among the casualties of the 23rd North Carolina to wait out the day. To the north, the 13th North Carolina, with a fragment of the 12th North Carolina, was backed by Bondurant's battery. They stopped the Federal assault around Wise's cabin. The artillerists placed their guns within a semicircle, facing south and southeast, behind the stone wall which encircled the house. The 13th North Carolina faced east, between the stone walls bordering the wood road. Bondurant's artillerists opened fire immediately upon the 11th and the 12th Ohio regiments as they blundered into the woods south of their position. Case shot burst among the trees and canister clattered through the branches overhead, forcing the Yankees to remain prone on the leaf covered ground. To the east, in response to what appeared to be intensified Con- federate pressure, Captain Seth Simmonds' (Kentucky Artillery) detached Lieutenant Daniel W. Glassie's section of Ten Pounder Parrotts to back up the 30th Ohio. Using prolong ropes, the sweating artillerists hauled their 1500 pound rifle tubes into the cornfield, west of the Hoffman house and south of the Old Sharpsburg. Road. They went into battery in front of the prone Ohioans.

( 9.)As they retreated, the Ohio regiments southwest of the cornfield made a concerted rush against the Wise house and the woods east of it. Colonel Thomas Ruffin saw them coming and tried to escape north along the wood road, where he ran into rifle fire from the 36th Ohio, which forced him back toward his original position. The 2nd and the 4th North Carolina fired by the right oblique into the 30th and the 36th Ohio regiments. Across the field from them, Private Andrew Wykle (Company K, 36th Ohio) saw his brother James topple over, wounded. He suddenly regretted having run away from home to enlist because their parents had refused to sign their consent. Ruffin's left flank had barely reached the wood road-Old Sharpsburg Road intersection when the 11th and the 12th Ohio regiments struck Wise's farm and enveloped its small yard. The rest of Bondurant's battery limbered up and escaped north to the position formerly held by Captain John Pelham's horse artillery section. Colonel Thomas Rosser and his 5th Virginia Cavalry, having evacuated their morning position with John Pelham's two guns shortly after the 2nd and the 4th North Carolina regiments arrived upon the field, went into line behind the stone wall on the western side of the wood road. As the firing increased near Wise's, Rosser galloped down to Colonel Duncan McRae, whom he found along the Old Sharpsburg Road with the remnants of the 20th and the 23rd North Carolina regiments. At McRae's request, Rosser lent him amounted courier who sped off to Major General D. H. Hill with the first news he had received from that sector in more than an hour and a half. Rosser then asked the colonel to retire his two regiments north, across the road, to the hill behind them, to support Pelham's two field pieces. They complied without attempting to contact the 13th North Carolina. As they retired through the woods west of the 2nd North Carolina, which was on the hill above them, they exposed the regiment's flank and rear to Federal fire from around Wise's house and yard. Thomas Ruffin tried breaking his 13th North Carolina to the rear (the west) only to find the woods in that direction swarming with Ohioans. Left with no option but the aged axiom that "the best defense is an offense," he gave the command to charge the 30th Ohio's skirmishers, who had advanced into the woods to his front. The suddenness of his attack stunned the Westerners. Driving the Yankees almost to their guns, the Rebels halted and turned tail as the colors of the 30th Ohio, followed by the rest of the regiment, swarmed around Lieutenant Daniel W. Glassie's two abandoned Parrott guns and charged toward the woods. The retreating Rebels returned fire and spattered Company G with good effect. A single minie ball, boring through C. Chamberlain's right shoulder, imbedded itself in 18-year-old Hiram Mushrush's right shoulder and felled both men instantly. (Mushrush's wound healed, but he could never raise his arm as high as his shoulder.) Across the road, Andrew Wykle (Company K, 36th Ohio), who was unable to reach his wounded brother because of the intense musketry, dove for cover behind a rock and waited for the rest of the regiment to advance to his assistance. His brother would have to wait it out with the rest of the casualties.

                 BEFORE SHARPSBURG OR ANTIETAM

 THE BATTLE FOR SOUTH MOUNTAIN  BY: John Michael Priest