[514]
Battle at Slash church and Hanover Courthouse.
Early next morning General Branch sent the Twenty-eighth regiment under me to Taliaferro's mill to cut off a body of marauders, but it was itself cut off from the remainder of the brigade by an overwhelming force of the enemy — the whole of Porter's division and a part of Sedgwick's — and at Dr. Kinney's farm it fought most heroically. Lieutenant Pollock, of Fauquier county, Virginia, at one time on duty at General R. E. Lee's headquarters, informed me that he heard General Lee, on several occasions, speak in very complimentary terms of the retreat and escape of this regiment under such trying circumstances, as well as of its gallantry in the fight of that day. General Branch, with the other four regiments of his command, engaged the enemy at Slash church, but was overpowered and forced to fall back after a most gallant and stubborn resistance.
