In the newsletter, there was a quote from Private R.J. Heath of the 34th Illinois who was at the battle.
"I was there [Bentonville] with a regiment that had faced Beauregard at Shiloh and Bragg at Stones River; that had participated in nearly every battle of the Army of the Cumberland...but for desperate valor on the part of the rebels, and for a desperate resistance...of our own men we saw nothing in four years of army life to compare with...Bentonville."
He was not alone. In hundreds of letters, diaries and reports, men on both sides testified to the extreme ferocity of the three-day 1865 battle:
"...we heard the bullets whistling their death song..."
"...like one continuous peal of heavy thunder..."
"...all agree it was one of the hottest places we were ever in..."
By this late date, under the circumstances with Confederate forces retreating everywhere in the face of huge numbers of Federals sweeping across what was left of the Confederacy and Lee in a death lock with Grant at Petersburg, it is a wonder that the southerners would have put up such a courageous resistance.
Quite the Battle Even If It Is Sort of Unknown. --B-R'er
No comments:
Post a Comment