Under such circumstances it is
not strange that the Twelfth Corps, as soon as its work was done upon
the left, was quickly ordered back to the right, to its old position.
There it arrived in good time; not soon enough, of course, to avoid the
mortification of finding the enemy in the possession of a part of the
works the men had labored so hard to construct, but in ample time before
dark to put the men well in the pits we already held, and to take up a
strong defensible position, at right angles to, and in rear of the main
line, in order to resist these flanking dispositions of the enemy. The
army was secure again. The men in the works would be steady against all
attacks in front, as long as they knew that their flank was safe. Until
between ten and eleven o'clock at night, the woods upon the right,
resounded with the discharges of musketry. Shortly after or about dark,
the enemy made a dash upon the right of the Eleventh Corps. They crept
up the windings of a valley, not in a very heavy force, but from the
peculiar mode in which this Corps does outpost duty, quite unperceived
in the dark until they were close upon the main line. It is said, I do
not know it to be true, that they spiked two guns of one of the Eleventh
Corps' batteries, and that the battery men had to drive them off with
their sabres and rammers, and that there was some fearful "Dutch"
swearing on the occasion, "_donner wetter_" among other similar impious
oaths, having been freely used. The enemy here were finally repulsed by
the assistance of Col. Correll's brigade of the Third Division of the
Second Corps, and the 106th Pa., from the Second Division of the same
Corps, was by Gen. Howard's request sent there to do outpost duty. It
seems to have been a matter of utter madness and folly on the part of
the enemy to have continued their night attack, as they did upon the
right. Our men were securely covered by ample works and even in most
places a log was placed a few inches above the top of the main
breastwork, as a protection to the heads of the men as they thrust out
their pieces beneath it to fire. Yet in the darkness the enemy would
rush up, clambering over rocks and among trees, even to the front of the
works, but only to leave their riddled bodies there upon the ground or
to be swiftly repulsed headlong into the woods again. In the darkness
the enemy would climb trees close to the works, and endeavor to shoot
our men by the light of the flashes. When