The Portland daily press., 1892-09-17
the reserve lines and through them to the


The linen in Fort Sanders surmised what
the enemy was planning to do. Every foot
hold on the exterior slope was pared off,
the ditch was widened, and riflemen stood
on duty along the parapet at the ticklish
hours of twilight and dawn to welcome as
sailants in due fashion. A happy thought
Of Lieut.. Benjamin's placed another OBJ
stacle in the way of the enemy. Along the
front of the fort was field Of pine stumps,
where the trees had been cut off two feet
from the ground. Benz with his men,
wound telegraph wire about the stumps,
stretching it between them just high
enough to trip soldiers on the march An
abatis of brush was made under the screen
of a ridge, so as to be unseen until assail-
ants were almost upon 1t.
For some reason the Confederate attack
was made at the first streak of dawn, leav-
ing but little time for the artillery pre-
lude. It was on Sunday, the day of count
less big enterprises in war, some lucky and
some just the contrary. The Confederate
batteries fired few signal shells at the
fort and tossed few more into the lines
beyond it, and were then called off their
exciting game to give cold steel chance.
Suddenly three lines of men in gray, 1000
Mississippians and 1000 Georgians, from
McLaws veteran division, rushed from
their cover, 200 yards from the goal, and
headed for it at double quick. They moved
on noiselessly, without yelling or firing a
shot, but with their bayonets ready for eX-
ecution the instant the parapet was
reached When fairly under way the col
umns wavered, the front ranks going
down on the tangled wire. Benjamin
opened his guns with canister, and the
rifemen around him piled their shots upon
the discounted assailants. A setback
for them was inevitable, but the rear
ranks crushed the wire beneath their tread
and pressed on in the face of the storm with
matchless intrepidity.
They reached the ditch, but with their
ranks in jumbled mass instead of der
ployed lines, as soldiers should move to the
assault. The northwestern bastion of the
fort formed a salient angle and reached
out, as it were, toward the Confederate
lines. In their haste to be first on the
works, and possibly because of the con-
fusion over the tangled wire episode. the
heads of the three columns converged at the
angle. On the edge of the ditch everything
came to a halt, but many of the men were
cool enough to fire through the embrasures
upon Benjamin's artillerists and on the
rifemen above on the parapets. The fire
of the fort was soon silenced under these
telling short range shots and the Confed-
crates far in the rear believed that it had
surrendered.
An awkward wait it was there under the
muzzles of Benjamin's guns; but that
wide, deep ditch, that high embankment
beyond, slippery with freezing rain, how
could men jump and climb and fight off
opposition at the same time? The officers
and the color bearers leaped down into the
ditch and tried to scale the bank. Their
men initiated their valor, leaped in and
ranged themselves at the base of the high
bank to make human scaling ladders, and
some few climbed on, the shoulders Of their
fellows until they reached the top. The
flags of the Thirteenth and Seventeenth
Mississippi and of the Sixteenth Georgia
were made fast on the parapet, and again
and again the men around them were shot