By the 15th (the day of the battle) we had manerals so long. At my gun we had lost private Horton and Corporal Gunner Ed. King. Hilen L. Rosser at another gun had part of his head shot away. That night as I was pouring some water for Lumsden to wash, he was picking something out of his beard, and said: "Maxwell, that is part of Rosser's brains", out of the 40 men that we had at guns, we had only 22 left, balance having been killed or captured. A Federal officer rode around Lieut. A. C. Hargrove and demanded his surrender, and cut down at his head with his sabre. Hargrove caught the blow on his arm, but it beat down his arm to his head enough to "hurt like thunder", as Hargrove expressed it.
Hargrove grabbed a loose tree branch and struck at Yank's horse which about that time got a bullet from our infantry line and ran away from Hargrove, so that he made it to our new line.
That night we buried Horton near the Franklin pike, where we bivouaced. I cut his name on a head board, and Command to which he belonged.
A detail was sent to the house that had been used as a hospital to bring his body. A long, tall, red-headed private, John Walker, was one of that detail. He had been carrying a great long navy revolver for months for use in such circumstances. When asked how many times he shot it. He laughed and said it was as much as he could do to persuade himself that he was able to get out with it.
It was about 12 o'clock that Capt. Lumsden sent orderly Sergeant J. Mack Shivers on horseback to report to General Stewart that all Confederate infantry had been driven into the fallen timber at our front, and that it was evident the enemy would soon rush us with a charge. That we could leave the guns and get away with all the men.
Shivers returned with the orders, "Tell Captain Lumsden it is necessary to hold the enemy in check to the last minute regardless of losses." This was about 12:30 p.m. They overwhelmed us about 2 p.m.
So that Lumsden's Battery alone had stopped the advance of A. J. Smith's federal Corps for 3 hours during which Confederate troops had been moved from right wing to a new line behind the Hillsboro pike several hundred yards in our rear, which was all important, to the Confederates.
