it at all hazards. Here the men rested on their arms for some time, having been hotly engaged with the enemy at intervals for more than three hours.

This concluded our engagement of the morning. The brigade remained in position on the extreme right (a short distance from Colonel Thayer's brigade), in view of the enemy during the subsequent action at the center, holding him in check and protecting the hospital. During the engagement at the center a volley was fired on the hospital by the enemy's sharpshooters from the hills to the right, and but for the presence of the brigade it would doubtless have been taken. In this position valuable information was obtained as to the enemy's movements on the right. From this point dispatches were sent and here subsequently General Wallace met me.

The ground on which the action occurred is a succession of hills and ravines, covered with a thick undergrowth of oak bushes. The deadened leaves of the oak shrubs were almost identical in color with the brown jean uniforms of the enemy, and rendered it almost impossible to distinguish their line until a fire revealed its locality. This fact, together with the character of the ground, gave the enemy a great advantage, and spread a feeling of uncertainty among the men as to the location of the attacking lines. It is impossible to say with accuracy what force of the enemy was encountered. From the best observations that could be made it is believed that there were at least five regiments of infantry and one of cavalry, the whole under command of Colonel Roger W. Hanson.

At about 4 p. m. an order was received from General Wallace to co-operate with Colonel Smith's brigade, consisting of the Eighth Missouri and the Eleventh Indiana, in carrying the enemy's works on the right, in the front of Dover, by storm. The officers and men, though much fatigued from the action of the morning and worn from loss of rest and lack of food, responded cheerfully to the order and wheeled into column. The enemy was in force on the hill, under cover of the wood on both sides of the only road leading up into the direction of the works. It was necessary to cross an open space of several hundred feet, exposed to the enemy's fire, before the foot of the hill could be reached. The Eighth Missouri led the advance up the road. The Eleventh Indiana charged up the hill on the left. The Forty-fourth Indiana followed up the road. Five companies of the Thirty-first Indiana were ordered up the hill on the extreme left, and the remainder of this regiment, with the residue of the brigade, were ordered to the right, to outflank the enemy and attack in rear. The assault was a complete success. All the regiments behaved handsomely. The whole of my brigade was actually engaged. In a sharp and desperate fight of a few minutes' duration the hill was carried by storm, and the enemy, with tremendous cheers, driven up to and within his breastworks. The flank attack of the portion of my brigade up the hill, in a line at a right angle to the main advance, was gallantly conducted, and contributed no doubt largely to the rout of the enemy. Colonel Dickey, of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry, during the attack, at my request dismounted four-fifths of his troops, armed with Sharp's rifles, and led them up the hill in support of regiments engaged. His aid, however, was not required.

This action, a brilliant one in any view, was rendered more so from the fact that it was made in the face of a heavy fire of grape and shrapnel from the battery of the enemy located across the ravine to the left of the road, in full command of the hill and the approaches to it. After pursuing the enemy to the open ground in front of the fortifications, a