Of Augur's operations in the centre, it is enough to say that the feigned attack assigned to this portion of the line was made briskly and in good order at the appointed time, without great loss.
The result of the day may be summed up as a bloody repulse; beholding the death and maiming of so many of the bravest and best of the officers and men, the repulse may be even termed a disaster. In the whole service of the Nineteenth Army Corps darkness never shut in upon a gloomier field. Men went about their work in a silence stronger than words.
On this day 21 officers and 182 men were killed, 72 officers and 1,245 men were wounded, 6 officers and 180 men missing; besides these, 13 were reported as killed, 84 as wounded, and 2 as missing without distinguishing between officers and men, thus making a total of 216 killed, 1,401 wounded, 188 missing--in all, 1,805. Among the wounded many had received mortal hurts, while of the missing, as in the first assault, many must now be set down as killed.
Paine, as we have seen, fell seriously hurt while in the very act of leading his division to the assault. Nine days earlier he had received his well-earned commission as brigadier-general. He was taken to New Orleans, and there nine days later, at the Hôtel de Dieu Hospital, after vain efforts to save the limb, the surgeons performed amputation of the thigh. A few days after the surrender, in order to avoid the increasing dangers of the climate, Paine was sent to his home in Wisconsin on the captured steamer _Starlight_, the first boat that ascended the river. Thus the Nineteenth Corps lost one of its bravest and most promising commanders, one who had earned the affection of his men, not less through respect for his character than by his unfailing sympathy and care in all situations, and who was commended to the confidence and esteem of his associates and superiors by talent and devotion of the first order joined to every quality that stamps a man among men.
The fiery Holcomb, wounded in the assault of the 27th, yet refusing to leave his duty to another, fell early on this fatal morning at the head of his regiment and brigade, in the first moment of the final charge of Weitzel's men. This was another serious loss, for Holcomb had that disposition that may, for want of a better term, be described as the fighting character. All soldiers know it and respect it, and every wise general, seeing it anywhere among his officers, shuts his eyes to many a blemish and pardons many a fault that would be severely visited in another; yet in Holcomb there was nothing to overlook or forgive. As he was the most prominent and the most earnest of the few officers of the line that to the last remained eager for the fatal assault, so he was among the earliest and noblest of its victims.