“The Bullets Would Whistle Around my Head”

After the 15th North Carolina’s repulse, Brigadier General Howell Cobb, a former governor of Georgia and secretary of treasury, rallied the Confederates and prepared to drive the Vermonters into the water. Cobb commanded a brigade in Brigadier General Lafayette McLaw’s division and reinforced the line with the 7th, 8th, 11th, and 16th Georgia Infantry regiments. With great noise and shouting, the Georgians attacked Captain Samuel Pingree’s beleaguered command and forced their withdrawal across the Warwick River. Cobb’s troops then lined the rifle pits and fired at their fleeing enemy crossing the Warwick. This was the first battle for most of Cobb’s brigade. Private Eli Landers of the 16th Georgia wrote, “It did not frighten me as bad as I expected it would but I tell you when the bullets would whistle around my head I felt sort of ticklish.” Brigadier General William Smith, once again lucid from his fall, planned another attack against Dam No. 1. At 5:00 p.m., 22 Union cannons hurled shot and shell into the Confederate works. Smith ordered Colonel Edwin Stoughton’s 4th Vermont Infantry to cross the dam and Colonel Nathan Lord’s 6th Vermont Infantry to recapture the rifle pits. General McLaws, however, had his entire division at Dam No. 1 and quickly repelled the Union attack. Darkness prevented another assault, and the fighting resulted in 165 Union and 90 Confederate casualties.

Newport News, Virginia · United States