In your issue of the twenty-first instant, there is a communication from your army correspondent, A. J. Daugherty, which gives an account of the battle of Rocky Face Ridge. The hazardous undertaking of driving the enemy from that almost inaccessible stronghold is credited to General Willich, who is represented to have “ascended to the summit, and asked permission to march steadily forward toward the Gap.” I do not know on what authority the statement was made, but surely the impression it is intended to convey is far from the truth. General Willich took no part in driving the enemy from Rocky Face; and that he should have “asked permission to march steadily forward toward the Gap” after the battle had been fought and the danger past, is complimentary neither to his good sense nor his gallantry.
The following is a plain statement of the facts: The work of driving the enemy from Rocky Face Ridge was assigned to General C. G. Harker, commanding the Third brigade of Newton's division. The One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Ohio infantry, Colonel Opdyke, was placed in advance, and was the first to ascend the Ridge. At seven o'clock A. M., of the eighth instant, he drove in the rebel pickets, and at half-past 8 A. M., after sharp skirmishing and clambering over perpendicular cliffs, he rested his command on the summit of the Ridge.
After Colonel Opdyke had effected a lodgment, he found himself confronted by greatly superior numbers. This fact having been reported, the rest of Harker's brigade was sent to his support, and finally Newton's whole division were posted on the Ridge.
No other troops save those belonging to Newton's division fired a shot or were under fire while on Rocky Face, from the time of its original occupation by the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Ohio on Sunday, the eighth instant, until the evacuation of Dalton by the rebels.
This much of Mr. Daugherty's letter I have thought proper to correct; and although I am well aware that Harker's brigade does not need the honors of Rocky Face to establish its character for gallantry, I am not disposed to look on in silence, while its laurels, nobly won, are misapplied.
I believe General Willich to be too true a soldier to covet honor which he does not win; and even if it were otherwise, I cannot think the Journal would lend itself to falsify, in order to gratify his vanity.
I ask you to make this correction as due to truth; in justice to General Harker and his veteran brigade; in justice to the noble dead who now sleep on Rocky Face, and whose tombstones are those rugged, blood-stained cliffs; in justice to the two hundred killed and wounded, who are now absent from our depleted but still invincible ranks on account of that terrible charge; as well as in justice to the living, whose lives are daily offered to obtain redress for comrades cruelly slain, and to establish a government whose honor and power we have no desire to outlive.
