Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/465

at Port Gibson, Baker's Creek and Vicksburg. He and his gallant brigade were in the front of the fight at the opening of the Georgia campaign of 1864, holding their position on Rocky Face ridge, May 8th, against a bloody assault. At New Hope church again they fought in the front line under fire, and at Powder Springs, the battles around Atlanta and Jonesboro, wherever Stevenson's division was engaged. During the battle on Lookout Mountain he led the Twentieth, Thirty-first and Forty-sixth regiments to the relief of Moore and Walthall, and, said General Stevenson, in his general orders of November 27th: "It was Pettus' brigade which first checked an enemy flushed with victory on Lookout Mountain, and held him at bay until ordered to retire. On the next day, on the right of Missionary Ridge, the whole division (Brown's, Cumming's and Pettus' brigades) fought with a courage which merited and won success." Whatever the issue with other commands, he said, the men of his division could look back to Missionary Ridge with the pride of soldiers entitled to the admiration of their country. In November he led his brigade into Tennessee, and his men were the first to cross Duck river, thrown across in squads, in a single boat, and making "a most gallant charge on the rifle-pits of the enemy, driving a much superior force, and capturing the pits." Both the brigade and its commander were commended by Gen. S. D. Lee for their gallantry at Nashville, and the heroism with which they fought as the rear guard to the Harpeth river. According to General Clayton, his division and Pettus' brigade, supported by the Thirty-ninth Georgia, were in line at Nashville after all the rest of the army was in "entire rout." Again Pettus' men stood like a rock at the Harpeth river. In the campaign in the Carolinas, in 1865, he led his brigade in the battles of Kinston and Bentonville. In the last-named battle he was severely wounded. When the war had ended he made his home at Selma, and resumed the practice of law, becoming