“A Determination That Knew No Such Word as Fail”

As the Vermonters pushed closer to the Confederate fortifications, they encountered multiple rows of obstructions designed to pin down an attacking force. There the Confederates inflicted severe losses on the desperate Federals, who struggled through tangled tree limbs under deadly fire from the enemy line. Lieutenant Robert Pratt of the 5th Vermont recalled that they pressed on with a cheer as best they could through the abatis. When 19-year-old Lieutenant Gardner C. Hawkins of the 3rd Vermont saw his men wavering under the unceasing hail of lead and iron, he sprang forward, flashed his sword, and urged them to keep their momentum and continue the charge, an act one Vermonter said had a pointed and decisive effect on his regiment and perhaps others in the brigade. Soon after rallying his men, Hawkins suffered a gruesome wound to the face when a minie ball entered the right side of his nose, passed into his head, exited through his left eye, and gouged his left ear and cheek, yet he refused to leave the battlefield. At last, the bluecoats tore away the obstructions, renewed their advance toward their immediate goal several hundred yards ahead, and plunged forward into the Confederate line with what Captain Merritt Barber called a determination that knew no such word as fail.

Virginia · United States