right wing of the new line, where we selected a fine position on rising ground with a clear field of fire and a magnificent view.

The new defensive line of which we had just formed a part, presented a concave front to Van Dorn’s army. Our elevated position enabled the batterymen to see both lines of battle. Being at the Federal right flank we became one of the horns of the dilemma which confronted Van Dorn’s hosts the next day.

Van Dorn’s magnificent series of assaults against our line began about 9:30 the next morning. The masses of the enemy first attacked our left flank and were repulsed. Then they assailed our center, penetrated it, but were at length driven back into the cross fire of our artillery.

By 2 P. M. the attacks against the left and center had exhausted themselves and the peril of a broken center was narrowly averted. Then the rebels, having concentrated for another supreme effort, bore down upon Hamilton’s division on the right. This was good tactics, because our right had been weakened by sending troops to the imperilled center.

The now familiar sight of masses of rebels, screaming the familiar yell, appeared in our front. As the mass approached I recognized them and called to the men: “Boys, there are the same troops that fought us at Iuka; are you going to let them touch our guns today?” The yell of rage that went up was more ominous than a rebel yell ever tried to be.

At six hundred yards the Eleventh opened with shell. The men worked like tigers in their desperate resolve that their beloved guns would never again feel the insult of a rebel touch.

Three times they charged and three times they were repulsed. Each time they came so close that we resorted to double charges of canister and never a rebel reached the muzzles of our guns. By four o’clock the Confederates were staggering back or surrendering in squads.

From some prisoners taken at Corinth it was learned that they were still unnerved from the moral effect of their assaults at Iuka. Those prisoners stated that, as they went into the assault, they recognized the bark of the guns of the Eleventh Ohio. Before these guns they had seen hundreds of their comrades fall like wheat before the harvester. They felt that they could not again silence the guns of the Eleventh. It had taken five assaults to do so when the odds were many to one.

At daylight of October 5th, after a night spent in convoying prisoners and caring for the wounded, we started in pursuit of the remains of Price’s and Van Dorn’s armies. During that day’s march our army simply gathered in throngs of rebels. The retreating force had been three days without regular rations and were too weak to escape.

For two long days and nights we pressed our foes until our condition was hardly better than theirs. At one A. M. on the second night’s march, we were stumbling along, almost dead with fatigue, when suddenly a band struck up the familiar song—John Brown’s Body. Other bands joined; we all woke up and were soon swinging along without a thought of our condition. I have often wondered what moral effect this musical demonstration, at dead of night, had upon our quarry.

It took us three days to return to Corinth, horses stumbling with weariness, men asleep in their saddles, tired but happy, a victory won against odds.

“AN ARMY EXPERIENCE”

The following appreciative remembrance of the action of the Eleventh Ohio Battery at battles of Iuka, September 19, 1862, and Corinth, October 4, 1862, appeared in the columns of the St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press in 1884. Having been preserved by a