11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment

The 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment of Law's Brigade, Hood's Division, C.S.A., first engaged Federal forces in the East Woods on the evening of September 16, 1862, where Colonel Phillip F. Liddell was mortally wounded. That evening the regiment withdrew to the West Woods behind the Dunker Church, and at daylight the next morning, while the men were cooking hoecakes, the battle reopened. Ordered into line as part of Colonel Evander Law's Brigade, they crossed the Hagerstown Pike, drove General James Ricketts's Division back over D.R. Miller's clover pasture and through the Cornfield despite heavy casualties, then reached a fence at the north edge of the Cornfield, where they met fresh Federal troops from General George Meade's Division and could not hold their position. Law's Brigade fell back to the West Woods. Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Butler was fatally wounded and Major Taliaferro Evans was killed in the charge, so the regiment lost three successive commanding field officers in the action. After two days of battle on these fields, one hundred nineteen men of the 11th Mississippi were killed, wounded, or missing.

Keedysville, Maryland · United States