Walker, Adjutant and Inspector-General of General Walker, Chief of Artillery, came with orders to withdraw the artillery, and against this I most earnestly protested.
"The four guns were withdrawn from Whitworth under protest; but the enemy were too close to permit the withdrawal of the guns from Gregg. Perceiving the guns of Whitworth leaving, the enemy moved forward to assault us in both works. He assaulted in columns of brigades, completely enveloping Gregg, and approaching Whitworth only in front. Gregg repulsed assault after assault; the two remnants of regiments, which had won glorious honor on so many fields, fighting this, their last battle, with most terrible enthusiasm, as if feeling this to be the last act in the drama for them; and the officers and men of the Washington artillery fighting their guns to the last, preserved untarnished the brilliancy of reputation acquired by their corps. Gregg raged like the crater of a volcano, emitting its flashes of deadly fires, enveloped in flame and cloud, wreathing our flag as well in honor as in the smoke of death. It was a glorious struggle. Louisiana represented by these noble artillerists, and Mississippi by her shattered bands, stood there side by side together, holding the last regularly fortified lines around Petersburg."
While Gregg and Whitworth were holding out, Longstreet was hastening with Field's division, from the north side of the James, to form an inner line for the purpose of covering General Lee's withdrawal that night. As soon as Harris heard of the formation of that line, he withdrew with his little band, cutting his way through.
At 12 o'clock that night the last man and the last gun of the brave army that had defended the lines of Petersburg for one year, passed over the pontoon bridges, and the march commenced, that ended at Appomattox courthouse. I have been induced to write the foregoing, of which I was eye witness, in the hope of correcting history. Many accounts have been published of the defence of Fort "Gregg," but all that I have seen have been generally far from the truth. Pollard, who showed but little disposition to waste compliments on the troops from the Gulf States, says Captain Chew of the fourth Maryland battery of artillery was in command of the work, and his account is reiterated by many others. If he was, it is strange we did not know it. A battery of Marylanders had in reality been disbanded a short time before the fight, their time having expired, and they were awaiting their discharge papers to enable them to go to their homes. If Captain Chew was in the fort at all, he was simply there as a volunteer or a spectator.
We should give the honor to those who earned it in this fierce fight of three hours against such fearful odds. Swinton, in his "Army of the Potomac," in his description of the breaking through the lines on this historic Sunday, says:
"On reaching the lines immediately around Petersburg, a part of Ord's command under Gibbon began an assault directed against
