Late in the afternoon of September 14, 1862, during the Battle of South Mountain, Union Gen. William B. Franklin finally ordered an attack at Crampton’s Gap against Confederate Gen. Lafayette McLaws’s force. As the Confederate defensive line along the Mountain Church Road began to disintegrate, Gen. Howell Cobb arrived in Whipp’s ravine with reinforcements to stop the Federal onrush, but his men were soon surrounded on three sides. Lt. Col. Jefferson Lamar, leading Cobb’s Georgia Legion, saw that his command must either retreat with the rest of the Confederates stampeding west or stand and fight to give the others a chance to escape, and he chose to fight. After a bullet smashed into his leg, he finally ordered what was left of the Legion to withdraw, but he was then mortally wounded in the chest. The Federals continued their advance up the mountain, were stopped briefly by two guns of the Troup Light Artillery positioned in the road, and soon forced the withdrawal of the cannons, one of which was left behind when its carriage broke. Franklin’s men then overwhelmed a Confederate last stand behind a stone wall on the reverse slope of the mountain. Southern resistance dissolved as those not killed, badly wounded, or captured retreated into the valley below. After capturing Crampton’s Gap, Franklin called a halt, and the Confederates formed a defensive line across the valley that eliminated any chance of a Union rescue at Harpers Ferry.