The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003 Page: 581
This periodical is part of the collection entitled: Southwestern Historical Quarterly and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Texas State Historical Association.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
"... Willing Never To Go in Another Fight"
Our brigade was ordered in about three. We double-quickened it about a mile be-
fore we met the enemy. We first met two reg. of Zouaves. We kept advancing &
shooting until we got within thirty yards of them. They then broke and fled, but
few of their number were left to tell the tale. The ground was perfectly strewn with
the bodies of the red breeched fellows. This was but the commencement of the
carnage. We then had three successive lines of battle to charge over. This was done
& when night came & put an end to the dreadful carnage it found the enemy in
full retreat. Had there been aJoshua to save the setting sun, we might have made
captives of almost the entire army, but when dawn came they were too far off to be
followed by our worn out and exhausted troops ...
Rufus King continued by sharing the reality of the glorious victory and
sparing no details:
I walked over the battlefield this morning. The sight was indeed horrifying in the
extreme, you could see corps mangled in every conceivable way & hear the moans
of the wounded in every direction. The only consolation was that you could see
five times as many Yanks as Rebels. Our brigade suffered dreadfully. Our reg. lost
280 killed & wounded out of five hundred. Our company lost 25 out of about 40.16
While yet another frontal assault caused the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph
to proclaim, "The glorious Texan soldiers have again won undying fame
on the battle field," the Fifth Texas Infantry suffered higher losses than
any other Confederate regiment at Second Manassas. The regiment lost
seven different flag bearers and the regimental flag had twenty-eight [bul-
let holes] through it. Yet, Rufus King could write that he "went through
the fight of M. [Manassas] ... without a scratch. Miers, I suppose you have
heard, was wounded at M. in the arm & foot.""
Rufus King's cousin Miers was first wounded in his foot. He was a big
man, well over six feet tall and weighing over two hundred pounds, and fell
to the ground while attempting to hobble back to safety. While Miers was
lying there, a musket ball struck him in the arm. He lay on the battlefield
amid the wounded and dying through the night and into the next day. A
detail finally came across Miers and loaded him onto an ambulance wagon,
full of screaming and moaning men, which took him on a jolting, painful
ride to a field hospital. He lay there without care for some time, as doctors
were occupied with more seriously wounded men. Miers knew that he
needed to remove the minie ball lodged in his arm and convinced a young
man passing by to perform the extraction with an old pocketknife. Infec-
tion set in and a brother-in-law came up from South Carolina and took
, Felder letter, Oct. 1, 1862.
"' Houston Tn-Weekly Telegraph, Sept 29, 1862 (1st quotation); Hennessey, Return to Bull Run,
405; H. B. Simpson (ed.), Touched with Valor: Ctval War Papers and Casualty Reports of Hood's Texas
Brigade. Wrtten and Collected by JeromeB. Robertson (Hillsboro, Tex.. HillJunior College Press, 1964),
12; Felder letter, Sept. 23, 1862 (2nd quotation).581
2003
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Periodical.
Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003, periodical, 2003; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101223/m1/659/: accessed March 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.