[124] these had never a chance, and in spite of the heroic bravery of Sumner and Sedgwick, with most of their officers (Sedgwick being severely wounded), the division was driven off to the north with terrible losses, carrying along in the rout part of Williams' men, of the Twelfth corps. Battles and Leaders, II, 644.Palfrey says: ‘Nearly 2,000 men were disabled in a moment.’ Then he adds, with a candor rare among some Federal participants:
The jubilant assertions of Confederate officers in regard to the repulse of Sedgwick's divisions are not more than the facts warrant. They did ‘drive the enemy before them in magnificent style;’ they did ‘sweep the woods with perfect ease; they did ’ inflict great loss on the enemy; they did drive them ‘not only through the woods, but (some of them, at any rate) over a field in front of the woods, and over two high fences beyond and into another body of woods (i. e., the east woods) over half a mile distant from the commencement of the fight.’ Antietam and Fredericksburg, p. 91.
In this rout of Sedgwick, the North Carolina regiments were destructive participants, Walker's division containing them being, as stated by Cox, the first to start the rout. On the right, Colonel Manning, commanding a brigade, took the Forty-sixth and Forty-eighth North Carolina and Thirteenth Virginia,
and dashed forward in gallant style, crossed the open field beyond, driving the enemy before them like sheep until, arriving at a long line of strong post and rail fences, behind which heavy masses of the enemy's infantry were lying, their advance was checked; these regiments, after suffering a heavy loss, were compelled to fall back to the woods. Walker's Official Report.General Walker, however, mistakes about this advance being checked by Mansfield's men at this fence, so often mentioned in reports of this battle; for, as Lieut. W. F. Beasley has shown, the Forty-eighth (and perhaps the
