Existing comment:
(Stop 18) Artillery Duel:
Before the Confederate infantry attacked, the Southern army tried to weaken the Federal position by bombarding the Union lines with artillery fire. At noon, Captain William Cames' Confederate artillery battery took up position on one of the far ridges east of this location. From those distant hills in front of you, the Confederate cannon hammered these lines with fire.
With shells and cannonballs whistling through the air and exploding overhead, the Union artillery located on this ridge fired back at the Confederate battery. For more than an hour, these batteries dueled, and the ground surely shook from the rumbling cannon and exploding shells.
Since the Union guns could shoot farther, these troops had the advantage. Black powder smoke swirled around these hills as the Union cannon fired, their shells accurately exploding among the Southern guns. Several Confederate cannoneers, and several of their artillery horses, were killed.
Suddenly, the duel stopped. While the Union troops mistakenly believed that the artillery fire covered a Confederate retreat, they were soon proven wrong. Within the hour, the fields in front of you were covered with attacking Confederate infantry.
While the Union troops had won the artillery duel, it wasted much of their long-range ammunition that they sorely needed late in the day.
"The battery we were fighting was something over a mile distant. The smoke from their guns was all we could see. They had the advantage in the fight... and every shell was well aimed... an unlucky shell stretched out three of our boys on the ground."
-- Confederate artilleryman William A. Brown, Stanford's Mississippi Battery |