red in confusion, leaving 200
of their tents."

Gen. J. H. McBride, commanding the Seventh Division, says that he
succeeded in forming a breastwork with hemp bales "100 yards from the
enemy's works."

Gen. Jas. S. Rains says that with the Second Division, numbering 3,025
rank and file, he succeeded in gaining a position 350 yards north and
500 yards east of the College.

Gen. Thos. A. Harris does not give the point he reached, but the
concurrent testimony is that he was the closest of all, and is supported
by the fact that his division sustained the heaviest loss. To his
division is due the credit of the famous device of hemp bales as
advancing breastworks.

Gen. Price quietly appropriates the credit for the device to himself,
saying in his report:

On the morning of the 20th inst I caused a number of hemp bales to
be transported to the river nights, where moveable breastworks were
speedily constructed out of them by Cols. Harris, McBride, Rives and
Maj. Winston, and their respective commands. Capt. Kelly's battery
was ordered at the same time to the position occupied by Gen. Harris's
force, and quickly opened an effective fire under the direction of its
gallant Captain.

These demonstrations, particularly the continued advance of the hemp
breastworks, which were as efficient as the cotton bales at New Orleans,
quickly attracted attention and excited and alarmed the enemy. They
were, however, repulsed in every instance by the unflinching courage and
fixed determination of the men.

Gen. Harris says in his report to Gen. Price: "I then directed Capt.
Geo. A. Turner, of my staff, to request of you 132 bales of hemp, which
you promptly credited.

214

"I directed the bales to be wet in the river to protect them against the
casualties of fire of our troops and the enemy's, and soon discovered
that the wetting was so materially increasing the weight as to prevent
our men in their exhausted condition from rolling them to the crest of
the hill. I then adopted the idea of wetting the hemp after it had been
transported to this position."

The credit has also been stoutly claimed for Col. Thomas Hinkle, of
Wellington County, Mo., who two years later was killed in command of
a guerrilla organization. No matter whose, the idea was singularly
effective, and despite the most gallant efforts of the garrison, the
hemp bales were steadily rolled nearer, until by 2 o'clock in the
afternoon of the 20th they were in places