On December 31, 1862, at approximately 11:00 a.m., Colonel Dunham's Brigade positioned itself behind a split-rail fence running east and west to the Lexington/Huntingdon Road a few feet behind this area. By afternoon, after two hours under fire at this position, many of the men were killed or wounded by rails splintered by Confederate shelling. Private Joseph Hotz of the 50th Indiana later wrote his wife, "a shell hit the fence near which I stood and the rail struck me down." Showing great courage, Dunham's men unsuccessfully charged into crossfire from the Confederate encirclement on the sandy rise to the northeast, north, and northwest. Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Alonzo Napier then led a counterattack on the Union left flank and fell mortally wounded while waving his men on from atop the fence. The following morning, the Union commander ordered Union troops killed in the previous day's fight to be buried on the knoll near the east end of the Union line, and recent archaeological excavations confirmed the location of a number of gravesites.