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the breastworks we occupied had been thrown up by Geary's Division the day
before, but that Geary had been called over to the left to assist in repelling
Longstreet's attack, leaving but the brigade of Green in the works.

Upon the angle above spoken of Johnson made a direct assault and was
repulsed with heavy loss. He could easily have flanked it, leaving a regiment
or two to keep Green in the angle, and, moving down the enemy's flank, could
have taken his line in reverse before the return of Geary. But, then, General
Johnson was not a Stonewall Jackson, and the opportunity was allowed to pass
unimproved.

Fearing a sudden attack, I returned the three left companies to the breast-
works, where the men of the Third North Carolina and Company A were falling
every minute from the deadly fire of the enemy in the angle. Had the brigade
been moved a hundred yards to the left over the ridge, all could have been
sheltered, and many a life saved. But these brave men were kept in their exposed
position and needlessly slaughtered.

Until 11 o'clock in the night the firing continued steadily, and after that
time it broke out fitfully until daylight, when it was renewed with redoubled fury,
for during the night reinforcements to Green numbering many thousand men
had assembled in front of Johnson's Division.

To add to the horrors of the situation a battery or two opened upon the
division at short range, and most of their shells fell among the men of Steuart's
Brigade, who were compelled to closely hug the ground behind the breastworks
for protection?. A more terrible fire men were never subjected to, and it was a
miracle that any escaped.

In describing this fierce struggle for the possession of Culp's Hill the
historian Bates says :

What a field was this ! For three hours of the previous evening, and seven of the
morning, had the most terrible elements of destruction known to modern warfare been
wielded with a might and dexterity rarely ever paralleled. The woods in which the battle
had been fought was torn and rent with shells and solid shot and pierced with innumerable
minnie balls. Trees were broken off and splintered, and that entire forest, where the battle
raged most furiously, was, on the following year, leafless, the stately but mute occupants
having yielded up their lives with those whom they overshadowed.

And speaking of the state of the hill on the 4th :

We came upon numberless forms clad in gray, either stark and stiff, or else still
weltering in their blood. . . . Turning whichever way we chose, the eye rested upon
human forms lying in all imaginable positions. . . . We were surprised at the accuracy
as well as the bloody results of our fire. It was, indeed, dreadful to witness: