NEW YORK, May 9.
Gen. Marcy telegraphs the following:
WILLIAMSBURG, May 8.
Gen. McClellan, on the 6th inst., had a most decisive victory. Only about 30,000 of our troops were engaged
against 50,000 of the best rebel troops.
Our men fought most valiantly, and used
the bayonet freely which the rebels couldn’t stand. They fought well until they felt the cold
steel, when they took to their heels and ran like hounds, leaving their dead,
wounded and sick upon our hands. Joe
Johnson [sic] lead them in person. They
have lost several of their best officers.
The Herald’s correspondence
gives the following graphic account of the magnificent charge of Hancock’s
brigade on the rebels: “Scarcely a
hundred yards were between the rebels and the guns, when our skirmish fire
became silent. The lines of the 5th
Wisconsin and the 3d New York formed up in close order to the right of the
battery; the long range of musket barrels came to one level, and one terrible
volley tore through the rebel line; moment more, and the same long range of
muskets came to another level, and the order to charge with the bayonet was
given, and away went the two regiments with one glad cheer. Gallant as our foes were, they could not meet
that. But few brigades mentioned in
history would have done better than this did.
For a space which was generally estimated at three quarters of a mile
they advanced under fire of a splendidly served battery, and with a cloud of
skirmishers stretched across their front, whose fire was very destructive, and
if after that the rebels had not the nerve to meet a line of bayonets that came
towards them like the spirit of destruction, it need not be wondered at when they
broke and fled in complete panic. 145
were taken prisoners, and nearly 500 were killed and wounded.”
– Published in The
Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, May 10, 1862,
p. 2
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