In this battle the Confederate forces, besides the artillery already mentioned, aggregated twenty-six hundred men, of which fifteen hundred were of Hagood's brigade, and the rest Bushrod R. Johnson's. The Federal army greatly outnumbered us. Northern papers published lists of killed and wounded from five brigades. The estimated loss of the Federals was one thousand men, though prisoners captured (of which there were twenty-one) put it much higher. The Confederates lost twenty-three killed, one hundred and thirty-eight wounded, and twelve missing. There were of these one Tennesseean killed and six wounded; all of the rest were from Hagood's brigade. General Butler's inefficiency is the only conceivable reason for his not turning our right flank and cutting us off from Petersburg. I here were no troops between us and that city. The credit of saving that place belongs to the brigades of Generals Hagood and Bushrod R. Johnson.
At 10 o'clock on the night of the 7th of May these two brigades and the artillery fell back towards Petersburg, and before daylight on the 8th crossed Swift Creek. Captain James F. Izler, of Company G, Twenty-fifth South Carolina volunteers, was left in command of the pickets to protect the Confederate rear in this retrograde movement. On the morning of the 8th the Captain withdrew his pickets and rejoined the regiment. On the 9th of May the enemy advanced and took position on the north side of Swift Creek, in front of the Confederates.
I am unable to give an account of the desperate reconnoisance led by General Hagood on the 9th of May in order to ascertain the strength of the enemy in front of the Confederate position. The general took with him the Eleventh and Twenty-first, and a detachment of the Twenty-fifth South Carolina volunteers, composed of Companies A, C, H and K, under the command of Captain James M. Carson, of Company A. Nor can I detail the incidents of the fighting near Drewry's Bluff on the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th of May. The regiment, in these last-mentioned engagements, was commanded by Major John V. Glover, an officer in every way most worthy of the veterans of the Twenty-fifth. He furnished me with a list of the killed and wounded in these battles, and I here give them, with the hope that some ‘survivor’ may put on record an account of these
