es upon the ground
behind a rail fence. Here, subjected to the shells from the Union and
rebel batteries, the regiment can neither advance or retreat; but our
batteries, finding that their shots are as fatal to our men as to the
rebels, allow the remaining fragments of the regiment to retire from the
perilous position.

On the right of the Seventh Maine comes the glorious Forty-ninth and our
own Seventy-seventh, Captain Babcock in command. On the right of all is
the old Thirty-third, within supporting distance. The men of the
Seventy-seventh rush forward over their fallen comrades, making toward a
small school house which stands upon the Sharpsburgh and Hagerstown
turnpike, behind which is a grove swarming with rebel troops. Our boys
are almost on the road, when, at a distance of less than thirty yards,
they find themselves confronted by overwhelming numbers, who pour a
withering fire into their ranks. The Seventy-seventh receives the fire
nobly, and, although far ahead of all the other regiments, stands its
ground and returns the fire with spirit, although it is but death to
remain thus in the advance. The brave color-bearer, Joseph Murer, falls,
shot through the head; but the colors scarcely touch the ground when
they are seized and again flaunted in the face of the enemy. Volley
after volley crashes through our ranks; our comrades fall on every side;
yet the little band stands firm as a rock, refusing to yield an inch. At
this juncture, General Smith, riding along the line and discovering the
advanced and unprotected position of the regiment, exclaims, "There's a
regiment gone," and sends an aide to order it to retire. The order was
timely, for the rebels were planting a battery within twenty yards of
the left of the regiment, which would, in a moment longer, have swept it
to destruction.

The regiment reformed behind the crest, in line with the other regiments
of the brigade, all of which had been forced to fall back; but the line
held was far in advance of that held by Sumner's troops when the
division arrived. Thirty-three of the little band had fallen; they were
less than two hundred men when they came upon the field. In the Seventh
Maine the loss was still greater; of the one hundred and seventy men who
went into the fight, one-half were killed or wounded; more than eighty
of those noble forms were prostrated like the slashings in their own
forests. The Thirty-third lost fifty in killed and wounded. The total