Ewell’s division, and they met a bloody repulse; but they did not make the attack until after Magruder’s and Huger s brigades had been successively repulsed, some of them from the very crown of the hill.
It was 6 o’clock before Kershaw was ordered forward. His description of his advance will indicate what doubtless happened to other gallant brigades. Being in McLaws line, on the farm adjoining Crew s farm, he was ordered by one of Magruder’s staff to "advance and attack the enemy s battery." Having no other instructions, in total ignorance of the country, or the position of the foe, Kershaw marched half a mile forward in a wood, nearing the sound of battle and moving really immediately against Porter’s front, his artillery sweeping the open and the woods through which Kershaw was marching. Reaching at last the open, passing "three lines of troops" who had preceded him in the attack, he moved up a ravine to the slopes of Malvern hill. The artillery and infantry fire in front and flank was thinning his ranks, when his friends in rear (Twenty-sixth Georgia) by mistake opened fire upon him. At this crisis he ordered the whole brigade to retire and reform further to the right. While reforming on the Second South Carolina, General Ewell called him to support immediately a brigade he was about to lead against "the enemy s battery," and was so urgent, that without waiting for the rest of his brigade, he led the Second in support of Ewell’s gallant and useless charge, and with this affair, night having fully come, Kershaw’s brigade had done the part assigned to it at Malvern hill. The long march to this point, after the battle of Savage Station, with its losses, had reduced the strength of the brigade. Kershaw took into the advance on Malvern hill 956 men and lost 164. The attack on Malvern hill failed of its purpose, but one thing it did accomplish; the repeated assaults were so gallant and determined, and pressed so near the enemy’s guns, and inflicted so great a loss upon him, and so many
