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that when about to advance, the force in its front broke and retired to the woods on the
Antietam.
On
Walker's right, the attack on
Generals Kemper and
Drayton was so heavy that those brigades were giving ground, and the enemy was pressing up a ravine in their rear and on their right.
Walker changed his front, and attacking the flagging force, in concert with
Drayton and
Kemper, drove back the advancing line.
In this repulse the guns of
Rhett's battery, under
Lieut. William Elliott, did splendid service, firing at short range on the infantry masses as they came up from the
Antietam against
Jones.
The losses of the brigade at
Sharpsburg were 26 killed and 184 wounded, the heaviest loss falling on the Palmetto sharpshooters.
Capts. J. E. Lee and
N. W. Harbin, of the sharpshooters, were killed; and
Lieut.-Col. D. Livingston, of the First;
Capt. E. B. Cantey, commanding the Sixth;
Lieut. J. C. McFadden, of the Sixth;
Lieuts. H. H. Thompson and
W. N. Major, of the sharpshooters, were wounded.
To that part of the action of
Jenkins' brigade in which it was turned by
Walker to deliver its fire upon the forces driving back
Kemper and
Drayton,
Gen. D. R. Jones, the division commander, makes complimentary reference in a paragraph in which he also refers to the Fifteenth, in
Drayton's brigade: ‘The Fifteenth South Carolina,
Colonel De Saussure, fell back very slowly and in order, forming the nucleus on which the brigade rallied.’
In the two engagements of Boonsboro Gap and
Sharpsburg, the Fifteenth lost 110 killed and wounded.
The attack upon Jones on the right, coming from a whole corps, and met by his division alone, numbering less than 3,500, and the artillery on his line, gave illustration of endurance, courage and resolution seldom if ever surpassed in the annals of war. General Toombs,. with his artillery and two Georgia regiments, repulsed five separate assaults by Burnside's forces, and only retired when every cartridge had been fired and his position had
