e
enemy to re-establish their centre. The whole line again sprung
forward. A high knoll on our left was carried. The dismounted
cavalry was forced to retreat with their battery across the ravine
in which the Sharpsburg road descends on the west of the mountain,
and took a new position on a separate hill in rear of the heights at
the Mountain House. There was considerable open ground at this new
position, from which their battery had full play at a range of about
twelve hundred yards upon the ridge held by us. But the Eleventh and
Twenty-third stuck stoutly to the hill which Hayes had first
carried, and their line was nearly parallel to the Sharpsburg road,
facing north. Garland had rushed to the right of his brigade to
rally them when they had broken before the onset of the Twenty-third
Ohio upon the flank, and in the desperate contest there he had been
killed and the disaster to his command made irreparable. On our side
Colonel Hayes had also been disabled by a severe wound as he
gallantly led the Ohio regiment.

I now directed the centre and right to push forward toward Fox's
Gap. Lieutenant Croome with a section of McMullin's battery had come
up, and he put his guns in action in the most gallant manner in the
open ground near Wise's house. The Thirtieth and Thirty-sixth
changed front to the right and attacked the remnant of Garland's
brigade, now commanded by Colonel McRae, and drove it and two
regiments from G. B. Anderson's brigade back upon the wooded hill
beyond Wise's farm at Fox's Gap. The whole of Anderson's brigade
retreated further along the crest toward the Mountain House.
Meanwhile the Twelfth Ohio, also changing front, had thridded its
way in the same direction through laurel thickets on the reverse
slope of the mountain, and attacking suddenly the force at Wise's as
the other two regiments charged it in front, completed the rout and
brought off two hundred prisoners. Bondurant's battery was again
driven hurriedly off to the north. But the hollow at the gap about
Wise's was no place to stay. It was open ground and was swept by the
batteries of the cavalry on the open hill to the northwest, and by
those of Hill's division about the Mountain House and upon the
highlands north of the National road; for those hills run forward
like a bastion and give a perfect flanking fire along our part of
the mountain. The gallant Croome with a number of his gunners had
been killed, and his guns were brought back into th