When Longstreet had drawn off his troops from the scene of his defeat, General Burnside kindly directed General Potter to send out a flag of truce, granting the enemy permission to remove his dead and wounded from the field. The flag was courteously received, and for the space of several hours there was a complete cessation of all hostilities. As a reward for its services in this action, the regiment was retained in Fort Sanders as a part of its garrison, and consequently relieved from much severe picket duty, only occasionally going on to the line immediately in front of the fort. But the duties of the fort, while not so arduous as those of the rifle-pits, were very important, and called for the exercise of constant vigilance. By day, one-third of the men were allowed to sleep in camp, one-third to rest in the fort with their belts on, and one-third stood to arms at the parapet; while at night all the men except a camp guard were required to be in the fort, one-half under arms and one-half resting with their belts on. At three o’clock each morning, the whole garrison was called up and stood to arms till six o’clock. One-half of the officers could be in camp by day, one-fourth must be at the parapet, and the remainder at rest in the works; and at three o’clock in the morning, all the officers were ordered to stand to arms with their men.
The casual mention, in the course of this chapter, of the telegraph wires which were stretched over the field in front of the fort, leads the author to speak of another device employed by our engineers who constructed these fortifications,--a defensive preparation, as ingenious in its nature as it was destructive in its results. The whole open space within our lines, directly in front of the fort, had been carefully plowed, with furrows leading generally to the work, not parallel, but converging towards a point opposite the main battery. It is natural for men when passing over broken ground to avoid the ridges and seek the smooth places and hollows. The furrows were quite wide and well defined, and when the enemy’s column charged in the gray of the morning, his men coming suddenly upon the plowed ground, were thrown into great confusion. They took to the furrows, as was expected, and by the time they had reached the point where the furrows converged, the whole of the first battle line, consisting of a brigade, was huddled together in a disorganized mass, and in this condition received the concentrated fire of every gun on the works, which poured into them several very destructive charges of canister and grape.