Monday, April 15, 2013

Porter's Battery: Fort Donelson National Batlefield


C. S. A.

BRIGADIER GENERAL SIMON B. BUCKNER’S DIVISION
COLONEL JOHN C. BROWN’S BRIGADE
PORTER’S BATTERY

This battery of 6 guns occupied this salient, sweeping all approaches to the front and flanking the trenches to the right and left.


On February 13, 1862, the battery assisted in the repulse of an attack made by a portion of General Smith’s Division against the right of the intrenchments.  Later in the day it had occupied a position on the opposite hill.


On February 15, 1 section of this battery moved to the left of the Confederate line and there served the guns of Greene’s Battery Assisting on in the attack upon the Federal line.  Late in the afternoon, after Federal troops had occupied the rifle pits on the extreme right, this battery assisted in preventing a further advance by the Federals.  In this last action the battery commander, Captain Thomas K. Porter, was seriously wounded.


6-POUNDER GUN





The 6-pounder was the prime artillery piece of the Mexican War and the smallest regulation gun of the Civil War.  The confederacy and the Union armies in the west used it extensively, but it was replaced in the Union armies in the east by the Napoleon and the rifled gun.  Its normal range was 1500 yards.  It fired fixed ammunition – either solid shot, spherical case, or canister.




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